HUGH MASEKELA

In the Nineties, the combining of various musics from around the globe---meldings loosely defined by the terms 'world music' or 'world beat'---is the rage. In jazz in particular, we see all manner of cross-breeding, including violinist Jean-Luc Ponty employing African musicians to play tunes that have a decided African rhythmic orientation, bassist Armand Sabal-Lecco from Cameroon collaborating as performer and composer with saxophonist Michael Brecker, and Joe Zawinul using West African drummer Paco Serry both in his own Zawinul Syndicate and in the version of Weather Report. But when Hugh Masekela recorded the thirteen selections that make up this CD in 1965, the intermingling of world cultures with jazz was hardly commonplace. It had happened, as far back as the early Twenties, with pianist-composer Jelly Roll Morton's use of Latin rhythms, which he called the 'Latin tinge'. In the late Forties, innovative bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie introduced a blend of the rhythms of Africa, Cuba and other Latin climes into the jazz world, calling it Afro-Cuban jazz. Trumpeter-composer Masekela's approach was different. Where Morton and Gillespie were American jazz musicians, Masekela is a South African. And while he embraces jazz in his performances (he's obviously been influenced by Louis Armstrong and Freddie Hubbard), there is a deep and solid foundation to his art that's clearly African, built around the sounds of his homeland; indeed, he has called his music 'Township Bop.' Because of this African core, which Masekela has blended not only with jazz, but with pop and rock as well, there's good reason to suggest he was the first 'world' musician.

-Zan Stewart, "Lasting Impressions", Liner Notes to new reissues of The Americanization of Ooga Booga and The Lasting Impressions of Hugh Masekela, March 1996.