Sizzling comic Loyiso Gola bounds into the room. Lanky, young, cheeky, he throws his long arms around Hugh Masekela.
They’ve got a banter - the 76-year-old from Alex and the 32-year-old from Gugulethu. The mere 40 years between them are like the sound of a reed pipe just before a party begins. It vibrates off the tongue as they cleverly try to outwit each other in a momentary brotherly encounter.
But there’s competition for the quick wit of Masekela, the patriot and superstar. He goes centrestage next week with a TV show which unites him with another lanky young comic, Kagiso Lediga. But there’s no bad blood between Lediga and Gola, who hosts e.tv’s Late Night News. The chance to touch sides with Masekela eludes all rivalry.
It’s Lediga who gets to share top billing with the world’s most loved trumpeter on their show, The Bantu Hour, which unleashes on November 7 on SABC2 at 9pm. The millions of fans of Lediga’s acclaimed The Pure Monate Show will be especially buoyed. The Bantu Hour has the same mood, only this time it’s got the supreme bandleader in its house spotlight for 48 minutes a week.
Masekela says this is easy for him because it wasn’t only the trumpet that was at his lips since childhood. He also grew up in comedy.
“African life is very comedic,” he rallies. “And township life is even more outrageous. It’s how we survived. It’s how Africans in general survived everything: slavery; conquest; exploitation. We got through it with laughter and heritage.”
He explains how most black South Africans will admit that that a lot of the comedy came through “making fun of the oppressor and outfoxing the authorities”.
“That came with a lot of humour, and so everybody is a bit of a performer. I have people I know, friends in business, artists, educators, who are hell of a funny. But this idea for me to actually do a comedy show came from my friend Themba Vilakazi - we were together in exile - who wanted me to do something like Saturday Night Live. I tried to pare that down. I told him it’s never gonna happen, but then just to get rid of him, I started speaking to other people who then introduced me to these young producers.
“I find Kagiso hilarious and extremely smart. We got each other’s humour, and then we spent three to four weeks recording episodes in uproarious laughter. We just make fun of everything, and there’s a section called Hugh’s Chronicles where I tell my stories. Themba (Vilakazi) is a plant in the audience to make trouble. He likes to shout out that I’m a liar.”
This has a been a sensational week for Masekela, not only because The Bantu Hour is imminent. He also celebrated the re-release of Still Grazing, his rollicking autobiography with African-American Fulbright scholar D Michael Cheers. It’s full of comedy, alongside revolution, love, deep loss and tales of beauty and survival.
In one anecdote, Masekela recalls an episode with Nigerian Afrobeat megastar Fela Kuti - who always travelled in an entourage of a minimum of 50 people - in Lagos. Masekela spent many years of his life connecting with Africa while his music was banned at home, living in several African countries, including Nigeria, Ghana and Liberia.
“Majestic mansions reared their fancy parapets and verandas in the midst of millions of hovels, shacks and corrugated iron storefronts, kiosks and improvised dwellings in and out of which ran snotty-faced, bare-assed toddlers and preschoolers, dogs and midget goats, dirty chickens and dried-up cats,” the writing goes.
“Women of all sizes.. pounded cassava and yam.. The men, muscular and taut, lingered about or walked hurriedly to some destination. Everybody was screaming, arguing or yelling at one another. Millions of restless souls, reeling from the heat.. pissed off at government negligence but somehow still laughing..”
“'Fela, why is everybody screaming at each other and so short-tempered?', I asked. Fela said, laughing: ‘Hugh, these people are very happy. These are Nigerians, man! This is their nature. They don’t hold anything back.”
Kuti then checked Masekela and his crew into the Niger Hotel in Lagos, and Masekela - who had studied and played with Kuti at the highest level - recalls in the book that “the rooms were funky.. the whole place smelled”.
“Fela laughed and said, ‘but Hugh, I thought you wanted a typical African atmosphere.
“That I want,” Masekela said, “but this shit is not it.”
And then, for those who haven’t yet read Still Grazing, comes an indication of its liberated atmosphere. The title comes from Masekela’s untouchable hit Grazing in the Grass, which topped the US charts in 1968 and sold 4 million copies worldwide.
“Okay Hugh, it’s too late now, (Kuti) said, but the first thing tomorrow morning, I will take you and your man to a place where the white people stay, okay? (Meanwhile), I’m leaving you with these two girls.”
And “two young ladies materialised out of nowhere”.
But it’s not only a full embrace of that vast and, let’s say, sociable side of his astounding history, which occupies Masekela. It’s our history as South Africans, too.
“I don’t care about heritage,” he says. “I am obsessed with it.” Heritage was the reason, he’s explained, behind his refusal to have his picture taken with young women wearing weaves and extensions at Rhodes University in April and in Umlazi, near Durban, in September. This provoked fiery debate among celebrities like Criselda Kananda, who condemned Masekela’s position, and artists like Ntsiki Mazwai, who defended him.
He says it was “tabloids” who said he’d demanded security to be protected from women in weaves.
“I can protect myself,” Masekela stetches out his legs and flexes his arms. “But this is about something much bigger. It’s about culture.”
Masekela isn’t joking. Drawn by the significance of his own ancestral village in Limpopo, he’s set up a heritage foundation in his name which intends to shine lights in every corner.
“There’s so much peer pressure on children to relinquish, but there’s so much in our history which they can appreciate: music, dance, pageantry. We’ll set up the first centre in Limpopo and then have satellites all over. Too many people are in the dark about where we come from, and if we knew more about that, we would have no xenophobia.
“We need proper genealogy.. I’m very keen to see this turn around. We’ll start small to create interest and mix it with a lot of entertainment.”
Masekela will surely add considerably to the flow with two more art projects set to unfold next year. The first is a musical of his life with accomplished actor and director James Ngcobo, who is also the artistic director at The Market Theatre. This came about after “some bullying” from documentary filmmaker Lee Hirsch, the man behind the legendary Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony.
“I was just a kid absolutely bewitched by music from the time I was born. It’s a deep psychology. Right now, as I’m talking to you, I have a song ringing in my ears. I’m haunted by it endlessly.”
He’s also set to thrill those who’ve treasured Still Grazing with a book of his own: “It’s not a sequel, although Still Grazing ended in about 2002 or so. It’s my present perspectives on fashion, music, society, politics..”
And how does Masekela, as a wise and revolutionary spirit, observe the #FeesWillFall movement?
“I’m right behind them.”
'Still Grazing' is published by Jacana Media