Hugh Masakela - 1980 - Live in Lesotho

Hugh Masakela

1980

Live in Lesotho

01. Ashiko

02. Ha Le Se Le Li Khanna

03. Stimela

04. Part of a Whole

05. Sister Fania

06. The Healing Song

Brand new extended and remastered version of the original LP from 1981. Gatefold with new photography and liner notes.

Alto Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone, Flute, Vocals – Rene McLean

Backing Vocals – Joy, Lorraine Mahlangu, Thandeka Ngono*, Thembi Mtshali

Bass – Victor Bailey

Drums – Poogie Bell

Flugelhorn, Vocals, Arranged By – Hugh Masekela

Guitar – Bobby Brew

By 1960, Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba were both in exile from South Africa. Two decades later, they had married, divorced, moved from London to New York and west Africa — but had never been able to return to their homeland. Victor Maloi, a businessman and fan, arranged three concerts in Swaziland, Botswana and Lesotho, which because of a complex geo-historical legacy is entirely surrounded by South Africa. Makeba flew in from New York, Makeba from Guinea-Conakry. Then they found that only the Lesotho concert was going ahead.

Nonetheless, the event in December 1980 was huge. South Africans flooded across the border to attend, and drank Lesotho dry. Masekela saw his father and his grandmother for the first time in decades. He and Makeba looked down from Maseru on the Orange Free State and the Drakensberg, tantalisingly close.

Plans to record the actual concert fell foul of technical problems, but Masekela’s band packed into the theatre at their hotel and taped a cut-down set. Originally a very limited release, it has now been rescued by the South African reissue specialists Matsuli. Masekela and his colleagues — mostly New York jazz musicians who had never set foot on the continent before — tear through six extended tracks with bright good spirits and an audience trying their best to recreate the sound of a stadium crowd. On particularly good form is pianist Don Blackman, who offers lyrical extended improvisations, bouncing off René McLean’s saxophone and Masekela’s trademark stuttering flugelhorn.

Two of the tracks — “Ha Le Se Le Di Khanna” and “Part Of A Whole” — are by Caiphus Semenya, an old confrere of both Masekela and Makeba. The opening “Ashiko”, restored here to its full length, is by the Nigerian saxophonist Orlando Julius (Ekemode), central to the Afrofunk scene that had revitalised Masekela’s career. “Stimela”, a lament for migrant workers that over the years grew into a 20-minute epic complete with a growled narration and steam-whistle vocal effects, is here a relatively paltry five minutes. At the end Julius sings Makeba’s “The Healing”.

Masekela and Makeba would reunite again later in the decade as part of Paul Simon’s concert in Harare — another musical expedition to the frontline. Live in Lesotho is only a partial document of the 1980 concert, but a wonderful one nonetheless.

Though it never reaches the heights of Home Is Where The Music Is, released a decade before and starring Dudu Pukwana and the peerless Larry Willis, this has very much the same feel, and Part Of A Whole, the classic Caiphus Semenya song, is again included. The present band was the one that recorded Home in 1982, with Hotel Cecil Barnard’s Sister Fania a key track. The live version here is longer and better, taking up the whole of side C. Ashiko comes from The Boy’s Doin’ It, which explains why, as on Home Is Where The Music Is (also known as The African Connection), the spirit of Fela Kuti and Afrobeat isn’t far away.

It’s fair to say that Masekela lost his way a bit in the 1970s and while nobody should ever be criticised for playing with Herb Alpert, who is a phenomenal musician, Hugh’s crossover work was sometimes a bit heavy on the pop dimension. There’s much less of that here. The vocals are sometimes a bit over-egged and if Victor Bailey and Poogie Bell hold down something alarming close to a disco beat in places, the top line of Masekela and McLean Jr is attractively raw and urgent.

The recording was done in front of a small invited audience in a Holiday Inn ballroom using a Tascam eight-track machine, so the sound quality is documentary rather than studio-clean, but that suits the music pretty well and off modern vinyl the reproduction is clean and sharp.

Part Of A Whole has always been a personal favorite, but it’s topped this time by another, more strident Semenya tune Ha Le Se Le Li Khanna, and the only faint disappointment is the closing Healing Song, a Miriam Makeba classic that’s maybe pushed a little too far.