{"id":41162,"date":"2019-11-28T16:57:49","date_gmt":"2019-11-28T14:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/hugh-masekelas-long-lost-1980-concert-on-lesotho-frontlines-reissued-for-the-first-time\/"},"modified":"2020-04-27T03:33:35","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T02:33:35","slug":"hugh-masekela-live-lesotho-1980","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/hugh-masekela-live-lesotho-1980\/","title":{"rendered":"Hugh Masekela’s long lost 1980 concert on Lesotho frontlines reissued for the first time"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The unforgettable political climax when\u00a0the trumpet player taunted the Pretoria Regime\u00a0on South Africa\u2019s border.<\/h4>\n
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Photo credit: Rodney Barnett<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It was in 1960, after the Sharpeville massacre, that the South African jazzman was exiled to England for his studies. He flew to the US sometime later and\u00a0reconnected with\u00a0his long time friend Miriam Makeba (they had met\u00a0during the musical King Kong in South Africa). Soon after\u00a0they\u2019d\u00a0be married. Influenced by Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie or Harry Belafonte, Masekela\u00a0released his first album, Trumpet Africaine<\/em>, in 1962.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Brother \u201cHugh\u201d rubbed shoulders with the Black Panthers and kept an eye on what was happening in Africa, where wars of liberation\u00a0were still raging. He\u00a0eventually\u00a0went\u00a0there\u00a0with his producer Stuart Levine, with whom he organised the musical festival Zaire\u00a074<\/em> preceding the epic fight \u201cThe Rumble in the Jungle\u201d between Ali-Foreman in Kinshasa. But in his home country, the situation was worsening.<\/div>\n
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In 1976, the South African regime decided to make Afrikaans the official language of the country. Riots\u00a0took place in Soweto, the black township of Johannesburg.\u00a0The locals are\u00a0suppressed\u00a0with bloodshed. Masekela and Makeba, although divorced,\u00a0had maintained a good relationship. He\u00a0composes the piece \u201cSoweto Blues\u201d for her to play as a tribute to\u00a0riots\u2019 martyrs. Banned from his country\u00a0due to\u00a0his activism, it\u2019s with a Ghanaian passport that he goes\u2014via South Africa\u2014to Lesotho, a small landlocked kingdom that\u00a0gained independence and escaped the Pretoria regime. At the border\u00a0of South Africa, the concert draws a crowd of over 75,000 people to denounce the apartheid regime. \u201cThe concert tore a gaping hole in the insulation the apartheid overlords had tried to build,\u201d wrote Masekela.
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