The Genius That's Masekela

Hugh Masekela

Justice Malala, a South African center-right columnist, writes about South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela: "Masekela is a reminder of the journey we have travelled as a country over the past 70 years: he was influenced by the church and gifted with musical talent, pushed into struggle, fled into exile, struggling to survive a lonely and seemingly unending period without sight of home, and made a triumphant return to South Africa. He is our terrible apartheid past, and a living example of what we can achieve as a country and as a people. Love of this country drips from every note he blows and every lyric he sings."

He talks about a Songs of Migration show, which highlights blacks from the U.S. South, Jewish pogroms, Zambian mineworkers, black South African migrants and Lesotho cattle herders: "At the centre of the show is Masekela: energetic, mournful, playful, funny, sad, powerful, vulnerable - and supremely talented and blessed with a fabulous cast. Sadly, the show's run at the Market has ended. It should return, and South Africans should see it in droves. It is one of the best things I have seen here or anywhere else in the world. These are the things that make us happy. These are the things that remind me that Trevor Manuel is not a leader of the coloureds, or that Jeremy Cronin is not a leader of the whites, or that Nelson Mandela is not a leader of the blacks. They are leaders of all us, the people so ably rendered by our national treasure, Hugh Masekela."

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