Trumpeter and vocalist Hugh Masekela’s album “Jabulani” has received a GRAMMY® for Best World Music Album, as announced by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) on December 5, 2012. All nominations were for albums released from October 1, 2011 to September 30, 2012. Winners will be announced at the 55th Annual GRAMMY® Awards on Sunday, February 10, 2013 at 8:00 PM ET/PT from Staples Center in Los Angeles, airing live on the CBS Television Network.
As a child in Witbank, South Africa, Masekela recalls the celebratory songs that filled his home town in the weeks prior to the weddings of friends and family members. In the month before the wedding of his aunt and uncle when he was just four years old, “the betrothed’s young neighbors, friends and relations would conduct a nightly choir practice from dusk until close to midnight,” he recalls, “marching up and down the street, singing the most beautiful songs accompanied by occasional, very intricate choreographed moves which were a pure joy to witness.”
When the wedding day finally arrived, the event was filled with music, dancing, feasting, drinking and seemingly endless merriment. In the years that followed, Masekela committed many of these traditional wedding songs and dances to memory. “I came to really love the songs and looked forward to coming weddings, choir practice and meeting beautiful girls,” he says.
Masekela relives these joyous and heady days of his youth on Jabulani, his latest album which was released, January 31, 2012, as part of the Listen 2 Africa Series from Listen 2 Entertainment Group marketed and distributed by Razor & Tie.
Sometimes wise, sometimes comical, oftentimes both, the 11-song set includes many traditional songs that date back several generations in South African wedding tradition. “This anthology and choreography have stayed deeply embedded in my memory,” he says. “This is a tribute to the township weddings of yesteryear.”
Masekela is joined on Jabulani by a large crew of talented players:
bassist Fana Zulu; keyboardists Randal Skippers, Xoli Nkosi and Don Laka; guitarists Cameron Ward and Ntokozo Zungu; drummer Lee-Roy Sauls; and percussionist Godfrey Mgcina. The celebration is further enhanced by the joyous and rousing voices of no less than ten background vocalists.