Hugh Masekela
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 11 July 2004
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the world famous musician Hugh Masekela. As a boy growing up in the impoverished townships of South Africa, he was inspired to learn the trumpet after seeing Kirk Douglas play Bix Beiderbecke in Young Man With A Horn. He begged one of his teachers - the anti-apartheid crusader Father Trevor Huddleston - to buy him a horn and in return he promised to stay out of trouble.
Hugh soon made a name for himself in South Africa but as the racial tensions intensified during the 50s he decided he had to leave his homeland to get a better music education in America. There he quickly made a name for himself with his fusion of African jazz music and became a 'flower child' playing with some of the great bands of the decade: Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and the Byrds. He's still probably best known for his number-one track, Grazing in the Grass, which sold four million copies worldwide in 1968. He returned to Africa in 1973, spending the next 17 years working on a range of musical collaborations in Botswana, Liberia, Nigeria, Congo and Guinea. Then, after thirty years in self-imposed exile, he returned to his homeland in 1990.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive for rights reasons |
| 0:06.0 | We've had to shorten the music |
| 0:08.0 | The program was originally broadcast in 2004 and the presenter was Sue Lolley |
| 0:30.5 | Michael's way this week is a musician. He was born 65 years ago into the appalling hardship of a black South African township |
| 0:38.0 | A part-eight ruled. He lived with his grandmother who ran an illegal drinking house, a Chabine, so his prospects for a successful life were small |
| 0:46.0 | Luckily for him the campaigning priest Trevor Huddleston bought him a trumpet on condition he kept out of trouble |
| 0:52.0 | His talent was obvious and at the age of 21 helped by Huddleston and some eminent international musicians |
| 0:59.0 | He left his homeland for a career in America |
| 1:02.0 | He played with some of the all-time great Jimmy Hendrix, Bob Marley and the birds and became an international name himself |
| 1:09.0 | Then 30 years on at the invitation of Nelson Mandela he returned to his homeland |
| 1:14.0 | The man who had escaped to be free could at last share his freedom with his countrymen |
| 1:20.0 | I never thought I'd become famous none of it was planned he says I'm most proud of the fact that I've survived |
| 1:27.0 | He is Hugh Massacala. So 30 years away from your home Hugh between the ages of what 21 and 51 |
| 1:35.0 | You must during that time of thought you'd never see it again |
| 1:38.0 | Oh yeah I know it was the impossible dream |
| 1:42.0 | I think that by maybe my 20th year I had resolved in my mind very clearly that I would never see home again |
| 1:52.0 | I had been unable to go and bury my mother who died in a car accident |
| 1:58.0 | That is like a far away from home as you can get |
| 2:01.0 | So when we were told that we could go back it was like the impossible dream |
| 2:07.0 | So all that fame and fortune that you found in America just didn't make up for anything |
| 2:13.0 | You just were always unfulfilled were you until you got back? |
| 2:17.0 | Well I came from a people who had struggled very hard to make me what I was |
... |
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