Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela

Black Issues Book Review, Sept-Oct, 2004 by Herb Boyd

Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela by Hugh Masekela and D. Michael Cheers Crown Publishers, May 2004 $25.95, ISBN 0-609-60957-2

Like his unmuted, passionate solos on flugel-horn, Hugh Masekela holds nothing back in this lengthy autobiography, coauthored with D. Michael Cheers, who teaches at the University of Mississippi.

They say that those who remember the '60s--which were the hallmark of Masekela's musical odyssey probably weren't there. Well, Masekela was not only there, but his life dovetails smartly with the rise of resistance to apartheid in South Africa and the role of music in this movement. And Masekela's horn is tantamount to a cavalry's bugle as it leads the cultural assault against the forces of oppression in his native land.

Apartheid's brutal segregation never stifles the energetic Masekela, who with the gift of a trumpet from Satchmo Armstrong, begins his journey to global prominence. In May 1960, Masekela secured a round-trip ticket to London, where he was free to meet those musicians he had idolized--John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye, Dizzy Gillespie, Jimi Hendrix and the other jazz greats whose solos he had memorized.

Masekela shows a phenomenal grasp of African American music and culture. Not a style of nuance seemed to have escaped his wide-ranging interest.

Herb Boyd