Almost Like Being In Jazz

Review

This is an album I've been waiting for, for quite sometime. The first straight-ahead mainstream album from Hugh Masekela ever, four decades in the making after Leonard Feather and Stanley Crouch, with the first now passed on, to quote the sleeve notes "vehemently declared THIS IS NOT JAZZ" Masekela states that he has never called his music jazz, but these doyens of music taste and style at the time continued to deride Bra Hugh’s music thus caused him to choose to stay away from these 'purists'.

Stewart Levine suggested to Hugh that they find an early cohort of theirs from their days at the Manhattan School of Music, pianist Larry Willis.

Contact was made and Willis was onboard, both masters were joined by bass player John Heard and drummer Lorca Heart for rehearsals and recording from 12 to 17 October 2004 and the album was released unheralded last year without much fanfare and fuss, mores the pity.

This is a side of Masekela that many have not heard before, what a delight and it is a must for collectors. The track selection is also very interesting in that a few of the standards are not often recorded these days, which in itself is a thrill for those who enjoy great tunes. The band is great with some sensitive and enjoyable playing. Miles Davis's influence can be heard in Masekela's sensitive ballad style, me thinks all that listening to the master at the Village Vanguard in the 60's with Larry Willis and Stewart Levine some of the Miles magic rubbed off and has finally shown itself.

It is an album one can pull out when one has friends around, who don't know much about jazz, around and introduce them to the sound of easy, sun-downer jazz which we hope will interest those friends in exploring the wonderful world of jazz many of us love and enjoy so much.

I for one hope this will not be the last time Hugh Masekela visits the standards and will do another album of this nature in the very near future, perhaps the songbooks of Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Farmer, Roy Eldridge, Nat Adderley and Lee Morgan. This is the type of album that master saxophonist Winston Mankunku and many other senior South African musicians would dearly love to record, yes they have the talent to do it and blow away their counterparts from around the world.