Hugh Masekela

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

Mike Osway this week is a musician. He was born sixty five years ago into the appalling hardship of a black South African township, a part eight ruled. He lived with his grandmother who ran an illegal drinking house, a shabine, so his prospects for a successful life were small. Luckily for him, the campaigning priest Trevor Huddleston bought him a trumpet on condition he kept out of trouble. His talent was obvious and at the age of twenty one, helped by Huddlestone and some eminent international musicians, he left his homeland for a career in America. He played with some of the all time greats Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley and the Birds, and became an international name himself.

Presenter1:09

Then, thirty years on, at the invitation of Nelson Mandela, he returned to his homeland. The man who'd escaped to be free could at last share his freedom with his countrymen. 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. He is Hugh Masicala. So thirty years away from your home, Hugh, between the ages of what, twenty one and fifty one, you must during that time have thought you'd never see it again.

Hugh Masekela1:38

Oh yeah, no, it was the impossible dream.

Hugh Masekela1:42

I think that by maybe my twentieth year, I had resolved in my mind very clearly that I would never see home again. I had been unable to go and bury my mother, who died in a car accident. That is like as far away from home as you can get.

Hugh Masekela2:02

When we were told that uh we could go back, it was uh like the impossible dream.

Presenter2:07

So all that fame and fortune that you found in America just didn't make up for anything. You just were always unfulfilled, were you, until you got back?

Hugh Masekela2:17

Well, I came from a people who had struggled very hard to make me what I uh I was. And um it was difficult to like.

Hugh Masekela2:25

accept uh the success that is uh now you know with the litter and the dl and the dilemma and the conspicuous consumption when you knew that you came from a people who were suffering.

Presenter2:35

But what you're talking about uh feeling there, I suppose, is a sense of guilt, isn't it? That you were out, you were having a good time, you were making it, and all those people

Presenter2:46

Of whom you come, you know, as you say, that was absolutely what you were. They'd made you what you were, and you felt guilty because things were getting worse for them as they got better for you.

Hugh Masekela2:55

There is nothing as lonely as exile, especially when you're among the first group of refugees to leave your country. You missed many, many things. And the first time you hear music from home that you'd missed, it goes to your eyes right away, you know. It's nostalgia. And I think you've seen it in Greek movies when they hear the m the movie the their music and they've drunk a little ouzo, you know, that kind of thing. But I mean, with me it went as far as sometimes going into Central Park and talking to myself alone, just talking Zulu and then a little Suthu and then a little African slang and then a little, you know.

Hugh Masekela3:33

Once a policeman came to me and said, you know, those people behind you are wondering if you're okay, you know. Are you okay, sir? And I was and I said, Yeah, and I was jumping from South Africa and my tongue had just gotten stiff and I'd just dreamt in English the night before, something that had never happened to me, you know. And he said, Oh, South Africa Then we spoke for another two hours, you know, I've I walked around with him in the park and he was uh uh in great empathy. You know, it was the first time he'd really heard uh from the horse's mouth about South Africa, but he knew about it.

Hugh Masekela4:08

When we finished, he said, Thanks for your education and I wish you luck, you know.

Presenter4:14

We should hear your first record, what is it?

Hugh Masekela4:16

This record is uh by Mashlatini and the Mahotela Queens. It's called Lilizela. And I first actually heard it around the time I was talk I'm talking about when I was uh in the park. But when I first heard this record, I just tears just came to my eyes. It was one of the most homesick and nostalgic moments.

Speaker 34:35

Kia, the Kia, the Kia, don't be the cashio. What to do for ya?

Speaker 34:44

Takia, Dakia, Dakia! You don't be a Koshio! We are Kulumua, we are Tam Tana.

Speaker 34:53

Akia Nakia Nakia Don is a crashio We are clumoid, are you talking Again listen to

Presenter5:03

Mahalatini and the Mahatella Queen singing Lili Zale, which means which means Yulilate.

Speaker 35:08

Uh

Hugh Masekela5:08

You do late.

Presenter5:12

That's great stuff. But you I mean, it wasn't just that that you heard as as a child, was it? It was American jazz as well that also hit the spot.

Hugh Masekela5:20

Oh yeah, the first person that really opened America for our imagination.

Hugh Masekela5:27

And was like had a very typical South African personality and a very happy.

Hugh Masekela5:33

A go-lucky sou kind of sound. And Louis Armstrong came from like um uh a generation before his were slaves, you know, and yet he epitomized the America that like we fantasized. And you were satisfied.

Presenter5:48

So you would see him or listen to him and you would want to be he people like Louis Armstrong were your robots. What others would you have?

Hugh Masekela5:54

What others would you have? We all imitated Louis Armstrong. Everybody, when we were kids, we sang along with him because he had his voice. I mean, one of our favorite songs was I'll be dlambed when you dead, you rascal, you, you know.

Presenter6:09

But give me a picture of you in, you know, as a small boy. This was in Whitbank.

Hugh Masekela6:13

Yeah.

Presenter6:14

uh which is a what a coal mining town just outside Johannesburg.

Hugh Masekela6:16

I'm sorry.

Presenter6:17

Um you lived there with your grandmother, as I said in the interview.

Hugh Masekela6:20

I was born in my grandmother's home. I was delivered by a midwife there. My grandmother was one of the people who didn't.

Hugh Masekela6:28

want to work for white people. And so uh she opened a Shabin. A Shabin is like a speakeasy, an illegal drinking house because Africans were not allowed to drink. The basic booze was b sorghum beer. Then she sold mbamba. Mbamba ba was called barbaton or something. Was a little more potent. It was like almost like a moonshine, like a cane juice, like a homemade thing mixed with sorghum. And then she s uh

Presenter6:56

Pretty lethal by the sound of it.

Hugh Masekela6:59

Ve face twisting, let's put it.

Presenter7:03

But you were a boy. You lived with her in this place until you were six years old. My servant.

Hugh Masekela7:04

Boy, what you live you live.

Hugh Masekela7:08

Myself and my sister, yes.

Presenter7:09

Did did you taste it? They must have tried it.

Hugh Masekela7:12

No, I didn't taste I I couldn't

Hugh Masekela7:14

You know how older people love to kiss you when you're a kid and their lips are always dripping. I had an aunt who just loved me and she'd be drunk and she'd just hug me and the breath used to k I never thought I'd drink in my life. And later on, of course, I became a major drinker myself. But um

Hugh Masekela7:31

Whitbank was a a a m a coal mining town and was a real right wing

Hugh Masekela7:38

English in Afrikaner uh town. Bura kids, uh Afrikaner kids called us monkeys, you know.

Hugh Masekela7:46

It was very much like an American southern town at the beginning of the ni of the twentieth century.

Presenter7:50

But how did you react when they called you monkeys? I mean were you taught not to react?

Hugh Masekela7:53

We were raised to be very proud and extraordinary, and we knew that it was our land and that these were usurpers. We were cleaner than them, we were more dignified than them. And when we grew up, we'd learned to laugh at the oppressor. And I think in South Africa, the oppressor had a much more painful time than the oppressed.

Presenter8:15

Tell me about your second reaction.

Hugh Masekela8:15

And um from the records, uh my biggest aim was to go to New York, obviously, you know, when once I became a musician. When I was six, my parents to get me away from the grammar phone, got me piano lessons. And I became a great classical piano player, but whenever the teacher wasn't looking, I'd play boogie woogie and other stuff. He came uh with a Louis Armstrong record, it was a seventy-eight RPM called um Rocking Chair, and uh in it Louis Armstrong was singing with a white trombone player, Jack Teagarden. It's one of the songs that I uh play almost a week doesn't pass by when I wake up in the morning, I go and play it and I just smile.

Speaker 38:58

Mine, Sweet Cherry.

Hugh Masekela9:03

Yeah.

Speaker 39:03

Now the old rock and chair has gotten in love.

Speaker 39:06

Old Rocket Chair got your father and a judgment day.

Speaker 39:12

It's giving up on me.

Speaker 19:14

Tell them about

Speaker 39:19

Second one, second one, Robin.

Speaker 39:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Presenter9:29

Great stuff with Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagard and Rocking Chair. So when you were going when you were six, Hugh Masakela, you went you left your grandmother's house, went to live with your parents, didn't you? And your father had a a milk depot and sold fruit.

Hugh Masekela9:46

He ran a milk depot for the municipality of a town called Springs, about thirty miles east of Johannesburg, as a health inspector.

Presenter9:53

He was also and and I I know this because I've read your autobiography he was also rather a violent man, wasn't he?

Hugh Masekela10:01

Yeah, Bwandiki could be very violent, it could be extremely violent.

Presenter10:05

Towards you?

Hugh Masekela10:06

Towards everybody, towards anybody who messed with him, but uh

Hugh Masekela10:11

It wasn't like always. You know, I saw only one brutal beating by my father and my mother, but it was very traumatic for me.

Presenter10:19

So it was against this sort of background of hardship and violence, as well as the music, that you decided that playing the trumpet was a a way of escape, a means of escape. Why would you choose that? Why did you suddenly think, Yeah, the trumpet's for me?

Hugh Masekela10:34

I chose music when I saw a movie called Young Man With a Horn and was the story of Big Spider-Back.

Hugh Masekela10:42

In which uh Kirk Douglas played his part and in and and in the movie Kirk Douglas stood in front of the band, always played the solos, didn't take any rubbish from anybody, wore the snazziest kind of clothes and always got the girl. And I thought this m there's a brighter future in this than education, you know, and uh

Hugh Masekela11:03

Um, I think maybe a few months later I was in bed with the flu and Father Huddleston knew both my parents. My father my mother was a social worker now in Alexandra Township, and my father was chief federal inspector. And Alexandra Township.

Speaker 111:16

This is Trevor Huddleston.

Hugh Masekela11:17

Yeah. Father Trevor Huddleston was like one of the m most rabidly radical activists. And he was a member of the ANC and was in all the Raleighs. That's how I knew my parents. And I was very restless. I had this trumpet player friend, I know, a friend who became a trumpet player to Stumpy, he still is now, who took me to the movie. Whose brothers were both musicians and very leading bands. And we were getting into a lot of trouble. But one day I was in bed with the flu and Huddleston came to me and said, What do you really want to do, creature? What would really make you happy? You know? And I said, Father, if I can get a trumpet, I won't bother anybody anymore. He said, Are you sure? I said, Yeah. He said, Okay. When you get well, let's talk about it. He gave me a letter to

Speaker 112:02

Did I

Hugh Masekela12:08

go to Polyac's music store and there was a Scottish uh bass player there who moonlighted as a salesman, Bob Hill, and it's the dear Bob.

Speaker 312:15

Yeah.

Speaker 112:15

Yeah.

Hugh Masekela12:18

Please give this boy a trumpet. I only can afford fifteen pounds. And he gave me the trumpet and I came back and Halston had already planned, he had a teacher for me. How old were you?

Speaker 112:27

How old were you?

Hugh Masekela12:27

I was fourteen.

Hugh Masekela12:29

And other boys wanted to learn the trumpet also. I mean, wanted to play instruments. They went to him, Father, I want to learn this, I want to play this. And soon we had the Haliston Jazz Band.

Presenter12:40

The Huddlestone jazz burn was born. Tell me about number three. What's that?

Hugh Masekela12:45

Um around this time we started listening to Bebopkin. We're listening to that. And there was a young trumpet player called Miles Davies, who just played a new in a very cool style. We all fell in love with him. All blues is always to me the consummate Miles Davis track.

Presenter14:02

All Blues by Miles Davis.

Presenter14:04

Trevor Huddleston, of course, was um he dedicated, as you said, his life to the struggle against apartheid, but he was deported, wasn't he, um, a couple of years after he got you that first trumpet in the mid fifties.

Presenter14:16

What what did you and your friends think of him? I mean, here was a white man who was prepared to help and put himself on the line for you.

Hugh Masekela14:22

Ariston didn't make you feel like you was a white man.

Hugh Masekela14:26

Alison made you feel like it was a human being and made you feel like you were a human being. And it helped he helped to get us focused on the excellence of humanity. Our battle against apartheid wasn't against white people, because we have to realize that very many Africans collaborated with apartheid. Very, very many. And uh the most of the police were Africans. So it's

Presenter14:57

I suppose you were either an activist or you cooperated with the business and then between

Hugh Masekela15:00

So it was a matter it was not so much racial as much as it was the right thing against the wrong thing.

Presenter15:05

The next thing, of course, going back to the fifties that Trevor Huddleston, having been deported, did for you was to get you another trumpet, but this time it was a really special one, wasn't it? Tell me about it.

Hugh Masekela15:16

But on his way back here, L Father Huddleston went through America where they had a few missions, and uh with another member of his community who was a clarinet player, they went to listen to a Louis Armstrong concert and and this monk was a friend of Louis Armstrong's, so he took him backstage to meet Louis and Huddleston told him about the band he had started back home.

Hugh Masekela15:41

And the Hudderson band sounded to him like the first band he had played in. And it just Huddlerson said he was so moved, he said, I gotta send him one of my horns, one I tutored on and so

Presenter15:51

So you've got a Satchmo horn. I mean my God.

Hugh Masekela15:54

So, yeah, when it arrived, I mean, we were so excited. But that horn.

Hugh Masekela15:59

That introduced us to the music community of South Africa and who started to help us. And like five of us, about seven of us, are still like musicians today from that band.

Presenter16:08

Record number four.

Hugh Masekela16:10

During uh this time also, of course, Dizzy Gillespie, he was doing Ubob Shibam and he was like the master of um uh Bebob Skatting. And uh he was called the clown of Bebob. But here's Dizzy Gillespie with Con Alma.

Presenter17:29

Dizzy Gillespie playing Con Alma. It was nineteen sixty, Hugh Masakela, when you decided uh to leave South Africa. You'd have been twenty one, and of course in May that year

Presenter17:41

The Sharpville massacre had occurred, hadn't it? Sixty nine peaceful protesters had been killed, and gatherings, I think, of more than ten people were banned, so you wouldn't have been able to play to any black audiences anyway, because they couldn't mass together. I presume that was part of the motivation of your going.

Hugh Masekela17:58

I had been bugging Huddleston.

Hugh Masekela18:00

Get me out of here, get me a scholarship. I have to come, you know. And he pushed and then through Yehudi Menouhin, who had been in South Africa, and Johnny Dankworth, who had also been in South Africa, they were deported from South Africa, Menouhin for hanging out too much with the natives. And Johnny Dankworth, as soon as they found out that Leolain was his wife, they deported him because relations between blacks and whites were not allowed in South Africa. It fell under the Immorality Act. So they spoke to the Guildhall School of Music here and they got a letter for me to be able to like go to school there and and

Presenter18:37

But there were still all sorts of hoops to jump through internally, weren't there? I mean, you had to have money to get you couldn't just decide to get up.

Hugh Masekela18:42

Yeah, hundred pounds, they said, in case like you got stranded overseas. It took years. I mean, I started applying for a passport in nineteen fifty seven because it was just impossible. They didn't want you to go.

Presenter18:57

And then what what was the feeling?

Hugh Masekela18:59

It was a very sad feeling because I never wanted to leave South Africa that way. I wanted to leave knowing I could come back.

Presenter19:06

But there must have been a sense of elation as well that you had achieved this. You were on your way. I mean, you didn't quite know where you were going to get your musical education there, but you were on your way and you knew you had friends out there, whether in London or

Hugh Masekela19:17

Oh yeah, also I was encouraged greatly by the fact that Miriam McGeba had a year before, you know, and she was a childhood friend and in my teens she were you know, we're a very hot item together.

Hugh Masekela19:29

And I think it's a very good thing.

Presenter19:29

It got hotter. I mean, you married her.

Hugh Masekela19:30

much later, but uh uh we were really like um childhood sweethearts and um she had like achieved the dream that's that we used to dream about'cause she was like uh hanging out with royalty, uh jazz and music royalty and uh

Presenter19:46

So you knew what you were going to.

Hugh Masekela19:49

Well, I was hoping because she was writing to me and saying, I hope that you can come out here and and and um when I came here a few months later, she just said, Listen, you have to come to the States, I got a school for you. It was like the greatest opportunity. And um the very first night I actually went to all the places where the people I had hoped to see

Hugh Masekela20:12

had like died five years before. Like Charlie Parker was not there anymore. Clifford Brown was not there anymore. And one of the most beautiful singers, I mean there was Ella and there was Sarah and there was Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and Dinah Washington. But when Billie Holliday sang a song, we used to call her Lady Day, and she was so beautiful that we all had a crush on her. The day she died, we all were very, very sad, as teenagers at home. But all her songs were just about like the tragedies of love, but nobody expressed it better than Billie Holiday. You've changed.

Speaker 320:48

You've changed You're not the angel I wants new

Speaker 321:00

No need to tell me that we're through

Speaker 321:08

It's all over now, you've changed.

Presenter21:17

Billy Holiday, and you've changed. So it all happened for you, Hugh, in the States. Um, too, as they put it, this little African guy who was blowing the proverbial out of the trumpet. You know, the

Presenter21:27

World suddenly became your oyster. You met your heroes, Armstrong and Gillespie and Davis, you recorded with and married Miriam McCabe, you made a solo album.

Presenter21:36

He went to LA, played with Bob Marley and the b I mean, you know, it couldn't have been bigger or better. But all the time I think you were under surveillance, weren't you? Boss, the South African Secret Service were watching you.

Presenter21:50

And I think I'm right in thinking that that that, you know, a couple of the heavies from Boss did come round and sort of warn you, didn't they? Or or even at one point did they not invite you back to South Africa?

Hugh Masekela22:01

Yeah, I was at at the at the height of my success, the pinnacle of my success, when I had the number one record in the States.

Presenter22:08

Grazing in the grass.

Hugh Masekela22:09

Grazing in the grass, and I was playing the village gate where it started.

Hugh Masekela22:14

And I had a three week sold out engagement there.

Hugh Masekela22:18

And at that time, I was on the Johnny Carson Show and the Mev Griffith Show and all the leading shows, and all I talked about was what was happening in South Africa. And the International Public Relations Man for South Africa was based in New York.

Hugh Masekela22:33

came um to the show and he said, Hey, um

Hugh Masekela22:37

You're killing us.

Hugh Masekela22:39

You know, you're giving us bad publicity and all these programs and

Hugh Masekela22:44

We really don't appreciate it, you know, but uh uh to be fair, we would like you to come home and see for yourself all the changes that we are making in our country and um invited me to come back to South Africa to see for myself and that they would put me up at the Carlton Hotel, which at that time was like the savoy of South Africa. You can come as a honorary white.

Hugh Masekela23:10

And that was it. That w that just broke me up. I said, You are inviting me to my own country that you have usurped as an honorary one. That's the biggest insult. And I I asked him to leave, get the hell out of my dressing room and

Hugh Masekela23:24

Uh he left me with the warning was that, Well, we we'll get you, you know. You don't want to like um work with us and you keep doing this to us, we'll get you one day, somehow.

Presenter23:27

Well

Presenter23:36

Echo number six.

Hugh Masekela23:38

After I peaked, uh I I I decided to go on a pilgrimage to West Africa. I um first went to Zaire, that was my first stop in my pilgrimage, and there I hopped knocked with uh the people of the records that I'd had. And Franco, who uh is the king of Congolese music, you know, and one of the funniest and most generous people, he had a his own club called Anne de Trois. I was just in uh music haven one more time. It felt like the first night I went to see Dizzy Gillespie in New York.

Speaker 324:12

My piece of magazine

Speaker 324:15

E queen esambo pa no

Speaker 324:17

Ponabacos Paguiso Magazine.

Speaker 324:24

E quendes ambo pa tú bona vacos.

Speaker 324:29

This on this on your fabric

Speaker 324:33

What many passage?

Speaker 324:35

Five members.

Speaker 324:38

This on this oh yeah my prison

Presenter24:41

Fabrice by Franca of the Congo. You had a good life in the States, Hugh, before you went on that African pilgrimage. You lived large, you said, in Malibu. You had Ferraris and Jaguars and so on. You've written that you probably squandered about fifty million pounds in your life on binges, women, and bad decisions. That much?

Hugh Masekela25:04

Well, I I think so when when you add up like um

Hugh Masekela25:08

what you lose, you know, uh what you don't what what what what you get cancelled for because you don't show up, because you're irresponsible and all that. I mean, when I was at the top of my game,

Hugh Masekela25:20

I hadn't expect I didn't prepare for that kind of success. I wasn't prepared for it.

Presenter25:25

But you had a background in your family, didn't you, of heavy drinking? And so perhaps it wasn't surprising.

Hugh Masekela25:31

Not only in my family, but I came from one of the most addictive countries in the world. Well, I started with marijuana in uh in South Africa, but when I came to uh the States, especially to the California, I discovered cocaine. Uh I got into uh what you call the Gonosia drug loop. And there was a time of Timothy Leary, an LSD.

Presenter25:57

Uh

Hugh Masekela25:57

And there we all were like at all the flower children, all of California.

Presenter26:01

When did you finally kick it then? Both drink and drugs?

Hugh Masekela26:04

It was nineteen ninety seven.

Hugh Masekela26:07

And I came to England to a mental health nursing home, yeah, with the help of my friends and my sister and everybody. And I came with the bad baggage. The psychology of addiction

Speaker 126:16

Check it

Hugh Masekela26:18

is something that I finally like studied later on. It's just something that happens from the fact that you are hiding a lot of hurt that you've never really expressed. I think from the time I was a child, because music was my main focus, to a certain extent it was an anesthetic against all the p pains of the violence in South Africa, violence in my family, the dysfunctional relationships, all my family, and the fact that most of my uh mother's side of my family all also died from uh from except for my grandmother and her sister, all died from alcoholic abuse.

Speaker 126:44

Hmm.

Speaker 127:06

Old drink.

Hugh Masekela27:07

All, yeah. More miracles have happened to me in the five and a half to six years since I stopped than happened to me in the forty four years that I was addicted. And one of my greatest friends who is also like uh and a great interventionist today is David Crosby. And in nineteen sixty seven, when I shortly after I had met him, he introduced me to uh this record called the Bulgarian Woman's Choir and he said, You gotta hear this, man. I said, What is it about? He said, I don't know, but you got to hear this because it's just spectacular. To me it sounds like they deep out of the Utturi forest in the Congo.

Speaker 127:46

Bum

Presenter28:17

That's the Bulgarian women's choir, and that track was called Rebke.

Presenter28:21

So Hugh Masakela, what of South Africa today? It's, what, fourteen years since the release of Mandela, a decade now since the ANC came to power. Th there's still shanty towns and a huge amount of poverty. I mean, it's a long haul, isn't it, to pull those people out of poverty.

Hugh Masekela28:38

Well, it's going to take a few generations, maybe in the next ten years. I mean, there's a lot of facilities that have been made available for many people. For millions of people now have electricity and water. Many, many people have like free medical care, free education. But this you know, it's a drop in the ocean. It's a drop in the ocean, but it's in progress. The the world sort of looked at us as a miracle country. They expected us to like vote and then be singing Heidi High, Heidi Ho into the sunset. So miracles are expected of us, but you can't fix a country in ten years' time.

Presenter29:17

The question for you, though, has to be that if there's a small boy somewhere around Johannesburg who wants to play the trumpet, you know, would he succeed in making it? Are his chances greater than yours were?

Hugh Masekela29:30

I think that for us now the new top is not making it overseas, is making it at home, because now we've got our freedom throughout Africa. We need to build an infrastructure within Africa where we reclaim like the entertainment and the cultural turf so that our musicians leaving Africa to come and seek fame abroad or education should be the exception instead of the rule. If we can capture that, I think we will have like gone a long way in the arts.

Presenter30:02

Last record.

Hugh Masekela30:03

And it's you know, it's it's this has been a wonderful program because I've been able to like play some of my most favorite uh music. But still, I think that if it wasn't for Louis Armstrong, the world would still be square and we would never have been sitting here, me and you, because I think he gave birth to all of us, he gave birth to Miles Davis, to Lou to Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown, just to like the whole movement of modern music and modern life. And the most wonderful thing about Louis Armstrong is that he shared what so many great leaders have, the quality of generosity and never forgetting his beginnings.

Speaker 330:50

Right in my math is all

Speaker 330:56

Bantas, Bantes, Bentes, Potis, Badu, Dad, Dazat, Veryato, Dozat.

Speaker 331:11

Good evening, everybody.

Speaker 331:16

Come on, bro.

Presenter31:19

Louis Armstrong, when it's sleepy time down south. Right, three questions to end with. The first is, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Hugh Masekela31:28

If I had to take any of those records, I think I'd probably take Mashlatini and the Mahotella Queen's, Lilizela. And I think of everything that I ever longed for when I was away from home was that feel that they give, you know, of like the community that I grew up in.

Presenter31:46

Second question is, we give you the Bible and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare. What book of your own would you like to take?

Hugh Masekela31:55

I don't know. I think I would take, um, probably a Charles Dickens book.

Presenter31:59

Which one?

Hugh Masekela32:00

Um, probably Nicholas Nickleby, because again, that's uh uh it it parallels my story very much of a boy I came from like

Hugh Masekela32:10

Deprivation to make it. I just enjoy his description of every character, especially Mr. Squeers.

Speaker 132:11

Yeah.

Presenter32:11

Uh

Presenter32:18

And then you get one luxury.

Hugh Masekela32:20

What if I can take a keyboard with me, you know, some kind of keyboard, even if it's a beat up piano? It'd probably be a great vacation for me because I'd just be able to write songs and have that time to write songs. And I write all my songs at the keyboard.

Hugh Masekela32:35

And to have a keyboard would be the luxury.

Presenter32:39

Hugh Matakela, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Hugh Masekela32:43

Thank you very much for inviting me. It was a joy and a real pleasure being with you. Thanks for the privilege.

Speaker 132:56

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.