GRAZING IN GRACELAND

GRAZING IN GRACELAND

Hugh Masakela hasn’t been back to South Africa since he left his homeland 27 years ago to study trumpet in London and New York, but he still feels the pull of those roots.

"We’re one community, home and abroad, in which everyone serves a particular purpose,” says the veteran pop musician, whose career spans more than two decades, from his 1967 instrumental hit, “Grazing In The Grass” to his featured appearance on Paul Simon’s Graceland tour. “Everytime our music is played, it is a source of pride to all South Africans.”

Which brings us to the controversy over whether Paul Simon’s use of African musicians constitutes a betrayal of the anti-apartheid cultural boycott, a charge Masakela angrily denies.

“The media insists if Paul Simon had not gone to South Africa, it would’ve been freed by now,” he scoffs. “What’s oppressing our country is right in your own backyard. Since I came to the U.S. in 1960, those who seek African liberation have been called communists.

“In Soweto, the real issue is the government and the police... it’s Reagan, Thatcher and the rest of the West, who pay us nothing but lip service. If you listen to the press, you’d think Graceland had impeded South Africa’s liberation. Of course, the irony is I don’t think the album has brought about any great progress in that direction, either. The South Africans know they have to do it by themselves, without the help of anybody...”

Masakela also refutes claims Simon was somehow ripping off African music and culture. “We’re all victims of capitalism. If Paul Simon has exploited us, it’s a drop in the ocean...Why doesn’t someone ask us what we think?...”

Masakela has been politically active since he came to America, playing benefits with Harry Belafonte and one-time wife Miriam Makeba, among others, for civil rights and African causes. In the ’60s, he made his home in Los Angeles and was a regular at the Whiskey, where he hung out with Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda and David Crosby. Masakela, who decided to pick up the trumpet after seeing Kirk Douglas in Young Man With A Horn as an African teenager, cut the horn solo on the Byrds’ “So You Wanna Be A Rock ’N’ Roll Star” and appeared at the seminal Monterey Pop Festival. His music has evolved through the African-flavored pop of the '60s to the disco explosion of the ’70s to the electro-dub of the early ’80s to his most recent Tomorrow LP, with its stirring tribute to Nelson Mandela, “Bring Him Back Home,” a highlight of the Graceland show.

Now in his 50s, Masakela has nothing but praise for Paul Simon’s effort to spread South Africa’s township sound to the world.

“If someone can be moved by hearing Graceland, it is far more touching than an Elton John playing Sun City for a million dollars only to say he’s sorry. The many people who bought the album would never otherwise have any connection to South African culture... What a beautiful way for them to have their first contact with it.”

Roy Trakin