On this day, 23 January 2018, a South African jazz and Afro-fusion music icon, Hugh Masekela, passed away peacefully at his home in Johannesburg, South Africa, surrounded by his family. He died after a battle with prostate cancer.
Hugh Ramopolo Masekela, affectionately known as Bra Hugh, was born on 4 April 1939 in KwaGuqa Township in Emalahleni (Witbank), Mpumalanga Province. Masekela showed musical ability from a young age, and began to play piano as a child. Inspired by the movie "Young Man with a Horn", at the age of 14, Masekela began to play the trumpet, encouraged by anti-apartheid activist Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, an anti-apartheid Christian priest at St Peter's Secondary School (now known as St. Martin's School, Rosettenville), who helped him acquire the instrument.
At Huddleston’s request, Masekela then received tuition in trumpet playing from Uncle Sauda, who played for the Johannesburg ‘Native’ Municipal Brass Band. Masekela soon mastered the trumpet, and began to play with other aspiring musicians in the Huddleston Jazz Band – South Africa’s first youth orchestra.
At the end of 1959, Dollar Brand (later known as Abdullah Ibrahim), Kippie Moeketsi, Makhaya Ntshoko, Jonas Gwangwa, Johnny Gertze and Hugh formed the Jazz Epistles. Masekela also collaborated with famous icons like Miriam Makeba, Zimbabwean Dorothy Masuka, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Hedzoleh Soundz, Francis Fuster and Dudu Pukwana.
Masekela also formed an integral part of the orche
