‘My greatest obsessions is to demonstrate African and the world who the people of Africa truly are’
Today’s Doodle celebrates the world-renowned South African trumpeter, singer, bandleader, composer, and human rights advocate Hugh Masekela.
Google has unveiled new expansion to its Doodle series featuring Hugh Masekela, an legendary jazz musician known as the “father of South African jazz” who was likewise an anti-apartheid activist.
Masekela was an rare artist who succeeded in fusing politics with his music, making his songs and performances compelling and timeless.
He passed away in Johannesburg last year at the age of 78 after a decade-long fight with cancer. Masekela would have been 80.
Trumpeter, singer and composer, Masekela, warmly referred to locally as “Bra Hugh”, began playing the horn at 14. He rapidly turned into a integral part of the 1950s jazz scene in Johannesburg as a member of the band the Jazz Epistles and a member of the ensemble in the momentous jazz opera “King Kong”.
“My biggest obsessions is to show African and the world who the people of Africa really are,” Masekela once said. The quote was highlighted noticeably Wednesday and Thursday on Google’s Doodle page for US and UK users.
During the 1960s he went into outcast in the United Kingdom and the United States, utilizing his music to spread mindfulness about South Africa’s oppressive system of white-minority rule. He scored an international No 1 hit in 1968 with “Grazing In The Grass.”
“Today’s Doodle celebrates the world-renowned South African trumpeter, singer, bandleader, composer, and human rights advocate Hugh Masekela,” a blog post by Google read. “Born 80 years ago today in the coal-mining town of Witbank, South Africa, Masakela got his first horn at age 14.”
During the 1980s, Masekela showed up with Paul Simon and a few other South African musicians as a component of the Graceland album tour.
Many of his compositions were about the struggle for majority rule and full democratic rights in South Africa. His snappy peppy 1987 song “Bring Him Back Home” calling for Nelson Mandela’s release from prison became an international anthem for the anti-apartheid movement.
Masekela supported many charities and was a director of the Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit organisation to provide daily meals to students in the Soweto township.
