Legendary musician Hugh Masekela has died

Hugh Masekela, South African jazz trumpeter has died

LEGENDARY jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela, a leading figure in the struggle to end apartheid and “the father of South African jazz”, has died aged 78.

The statement explained that the jazz veteran underwent eye surgery in March 2016 after the cancer spread, and had to go into theatre again in September 2016 after another tumour was discovered. 

In December, Masakela’s manager, Josh Georgiou, told TshisaLIVE that his client was fighting the disease with everything he had. E

Bra Hugh was born in KwaGuqa township in Witbank and began singing and playing the piano as a child.

After seeing the film Young Man with a Horn when he was 14, Masekela began playing the trumpet. His first trumpet was given to him by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, an anti-apartheid chaplain at St Peter’s Secondary School.

He soon mastered the instrument and by 1956 joined Alfred Herbet’s African Jazz Revue.

Bra Hugh’s music was inspired by the turmoil that South Africa went through during  apartheid and he said it was used as a weapon to spread political change. – timeslive.co.za