The Death of Hugh Masekela, 'Father of South African Jazz'

Hugh Ramapolo Masekela, the South African trumpeter, vocalist and composer widely regarded as the father of South African jazz, died on January 23, 2018, in Johannesburg at age 78, following a long battle with prostate cancer that his family had disclosed publicly in the years before his death.

Masekela built a musical career that spanned more than five decades, blending American jazz influences he absorbed during a long exile with the township jive and mbaqanga traditions of his native South Africa into a distinct sound that carried internationally. He left South Africa in 1961, in the unrest that followed the 1960 Sharpeville massacre and the government’s subsequent crackdown on Black cultural and political expression, spending much of the following three decades living and performing abroad, including extended periods in the United States, Britain and several African countries, before eventually returning home as the apartheid system began to unravel.

His music functioned as more than performance throughout that exile; it became one of the more effective cultural weapons in the international anti-apartheid movement. His 1986 song “Bring Him Back Home,” written explicitly to demand Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, spread widely enough to become one of the era’s recognized anti-apartheid anthems, performed at rallies and concerts around the world during the final years of Mandela’s 27-year imprisonment. Masekela’s broader catalog, including earlier international hits, established him as one of the most commercially successful African musicians ever to build a career primarily outside the continent while remaining explicitly identified with it.

Tributes following his death came from South African political leaders, international musicians and cultural institutions across the continent, reflecting a legacy that combined genuine commercial success with a documented record of using that platform for explicit political purposes throughout apartheid’s final decades. Masekela returned to live in South Africa following the end of apartheid and continued performing and recording into his final years, closing out a career that had begun when the Anglican priest Trevor Huddleston, an anti-apartheid activist who ran a youth band at Masekela’s school, first put a trumpet in his hands as a teenager, and ended as one of the most internationally recognized figures in African music history.