Still Grazing

by Hugh Masikela

  Two months later, in December of 1958, we had completed the orchestrations, and rehearsals went into full bloom with a cast of seventy and an eighteen-piece orchestra, in which I played third trumpet. We practiced in a warehouse not far from Dorkay House. For all of us this was a new experience, a combination of talented people of different races working united in the creation of an exciting project. Living with the Bermans opened my eyes to the ways of white folks. I had seen white opulence from the outside, but these folks had a fine house, maids and everything, including many indoor flush toilets. The Bermans were also old friends of my parents. They had met my folks during the Alexandra bus boycott, when they arranged car rides for the elderly and handicapped. Monty and Myrtle were genuine people; they welcomed me into their home and made me a part of their family.

  On February 8, 1959, King Kong opened at the University of Witwatersrand’s Great Hall, the only integrated venue in Johannesburg. The university had legal jurisdiction over its property and facilities, and although the government tried to prevent the opening, they lacked the authority to interfere. It was the first time that my parents and the relatives of the other African performers had a chance to see their children perform in an integrated setting. King Kong had a star-studded cast, with Miriam Makeba in the lead role of Joyce, the boxer’s flirtatious lover. One of her solo songs, “Back o’ the Moon,” became a South African classic. Miriam, who had left African Jazz to join this musical, was now married to Sonny Pillay. Following the opening-night performance, the Bermans hosted a cast party at their Sandringham home. The neighbors called the police, who threatened to arrest everybody for conspiring to contravene the Immorality Act, which forbade socializing between Africans and whites. For hours the Bermans were defiant, hoping mass arrests of the King Kong cast and their distinguished guests would be good publicity and a further embarrassment for the racist regime. At about five o’clock in the morning, Colonel Spengler, the head of the Special Branch Police, called the Bermans with his final threat. By now we were tired and leaving the party, and the Bermans had once more checkmated Spengler. The party was over.

  A few months into the run of the show, Sonny Pillay left African Jazz and Variety for greener pastures in London. I wished him well, though I was envious as hell. He promised to see Huddleston on my behalf, and find out how much progress had been made regarding my scholarship. Once he settled in England, Sonny wrote to me regularly. He also reassured me that Huddleston was trying his best. After a while, Huddleston wrote to the Bermans saying he had asked Johnny Dankworth and Yehudi Menuhin to assist him in finding me a scholarship. Huddleston said in one of his letters that both Dankworth and Menuhin felt that I needed “legitimate” trumpet and music theory lessons from reputable instructors whose recommendations would strengthen my chances of getting a scholarship. The Bermans used their connections to get me a trumpet tutor, Joe Vitali, who played first trumpet with the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra. Mrs. Bradford, the head of music theory at Wits University, also offered to give me lessons. Both of them waived tuition fees. I felt fortunate because this was probably an opportunity that no African musician had received before.

  Following the eight-month Johannesburg run, King Kong went on the road for two months to Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, and Durban. Once again, Miriam and I became an item, much to the surprise of everybody in the cast because Sonny and I were such good friends, but Miriam and I didn’t let that bother us. Somehow we always found it difficult not to be intimate whenever the chance presented itself—we followed our hearts for better or worse. Besides, when she fell in love, scandal never bothered Miriam Makeba. She was brazen and acerbic with anybody who tried to get in her business. This was probably why the press never wrote about her affairs. No journalist wanted to feel the wrath of Miriam Makeba.

  Toward the end of the Johannesburg run of King Kong, Miriam fell ill and had to have an operation. Prematurely released from the hospital and still very weak, she insisted on flying to Cape Town to perform. Just before curtain time, Miriam got her heel stuck in a crack backstage and severely sprained her ankle. The wardrobe department had to go and buy her a larger pair of shoes because her ankle was badly swollen. Another night, Dambuza, who played King Kong, was to act as if he was strangling Miriam. He got carried away and flung her across the stage, causing her to exit stage left on her belly. She still had abdominal stitches from her operation. Everybody in the cast gasped with fear that she would be seriously injured. But, resilient as always, Miriam carried on with the show. In October 1959, King Kong came to an end. When the train pulled into Johannesburg’s Park Station from Durban, we all said our good-byes.

  An American filmmaker, Lionel Rogosin, had come to South Africa a year earlier. He quietly shot an antiapartheid docudrama titled Come Back Africa. Miriam, who sang in it, was invited to the Venice Film Festival for the screening. To obtain a passport, Ian Bernhardt, the chairman of Union Artists, had Miriam write in her application that she was invited to Venice to be honored for her role in King Kong. Miriam’s departure was kept a secret. Only her ailing mother, a practicing sangoma (traditional healer), her eight-year-old daughter, Bongi, and Bernhardt knew her departure details. Ian and I accompanied Miriam to the airport. Ian felt that if too many people knew she was leaving, especially the press, the government might start nosing around and find out about Come Back Africa. She departed South Africa in November 1959. A week later the country learned that the documentary had been secretly filmed and had now won the festival’s award for best film. Verwoerd was furious, and the South African government looked foolish in the eyes of the international community. The Afrikaners wondered how, with their sophisticated intelligence network, a film like that could be made right under their noses. And to rub salt in their wounds, how could Miriam slip out of the country on a bogus visa?

  Although the money I had earned from the King Kong tour was more than I had made being on the road with the African Jazz, my expensive taste in clothes and other luxuries left me with meager funds. I was hoping for another stroke of good luck that would keep me in money. The last thing I wanted to do was to end up back at my parents’ home, doing chores and baby-sitting Sybil. One thing for certain: I was never going to take another clerical job working for racist white folks.

  Soon after the closing of King Kong, John Mehegan, a pianist and jazz professor from New York’s Juilliard School of Music and Columbia University, came to South Africa with his wife, Terry, a beautiful young woman. John and Terry, who came from the bohemian environment of New York’s Greenwich Village, were completely outraged by the absurdity of apartheid laws, which had taken them by total surprise. They had heard about discrimination in South Africa, but, not being political activists, they had expected the kind of Jim Crow environment that was slowly disappearing in America because of the civil rights movement. The severity of what they met enraged them. Their newspaper interviews supporting African causes rankled the government. The couple made matters worse by hanging out with us musicians in the township shebeens and walking nonchalantly with us down Johannesburg streets. John gave free music lessons to me, Kippie, Jonas, and other African artists, while charging whites fifteen pounds per lesson. John also featured us on two albums that he recorded for Gallo. The government frowned on any fraternizing with “the natives,” and soon got fed up with the Mehegans. Like others before them, they were asked to leave the country. John and Terry soon left, but not until I had bent John’s ear, begging him to help me get a scholarship. A month later John sent us copies of Downbeat magazine, where he had written an article on his visit to South Africa and the musical talent that was there.

  By September 1959, the government was cracking down with spine-chilling vehemence, infuriated by the ongoing Treason Trials and the escalating demonstrations against pass laws. With the formation of the Pan-African Congress, led by Robert Sobukwe, with its slogan, “Africa for Africans,” Verwoerd’s minions began wielding the hammer of repression with a vengeance. The disrespect that w
as being hurled at them by the nonracial South African Council of Students and the audacity of Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, and their ANC colleagues, denigrating and vilifying the government’s hallowed legislations in their court defenses, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The resulting repression could be felt everywhere.

  Work was drying up all over the country, even in Johannesburg, the entertainment mecca of South Africa. Jonas, Kippie, and I got word that Abdullah Ibrahim had formed a trio with young Makhaya Ntshoko on drums and bassist Johnny Gertze, playing to packed houses at the Ambassadors nightclub in Woodstock, next to District Six. We got in touch with Abdullah, and he told us to come down as soon as we could. We took the train to Cape Town and began rehearsing with the trio the very morning we arrived, not even having made any arrangements for accommodation. For the first few nights the three of us slept on mattresses on the floor in the back of the club. I put in a call to Dawn Levy, a radical University of Cape Town student activist with whom I became very close during the African Jazz and King Kong days. Her cousin, Tessa Kahn, was engaged to Jackie Marks, whom I’d met on my first trip to Cape Town in 1956, when he had driven me to all kinds of jam sessions around the city. This was also when I met the great saxophonist Morris Goldberg. Jackie came from a very wealthy real estate family that owned luxury properties all along the bay. He was in the middle of renovating an apartment in Camps Bay, one of the peninsula’s most beautiful and pristine beach areas. He offered the apartment to us as a place to stay. Of course, Africans were not allowed anywhere near Camps Bay except as domestic help or laborers. Jackie brought us through the service entrance as painters. The house painting had already been completed, but the paint, brushes, rollers, drop cloths, and other equipment were still lying around. Jonas, Kippie, and I had to wear the soiled overalls when we were in the apartment just in case the white neighbors came around asking why there was always a bunch of kaffirs hanging around the place. Dawn was also kind enough to lend us her little Morris Minor car. We would return from the Ambassadors long after midnight, and sometimes Kippie, feeling no pain from the brandy, would be in a boisterous, rebellious mood and start questioning why we had to enter through the back, dressed as painters. “Why the fuck should we come home through the fucking back door? Isn’t this our country? The fuckin’ Afrikaners should be wearing these fuckin’ overalls and coming to our township houses through the back doors to paint our fuckin’ places. This is rubbish, man.” Jonas and I would beg Kippie to please shut the fuck up until we were inside the apartment. Fortunately, we were never busted.

  We performed seven nights a week to packed houses at the Ambassadors. We rehearsed every day from ten to seven, and had a few hours’ break before our first show. We played bebop favorites by Monk, Gillespie, Miles, and Charlie Parker, and evergreens by Ellington, Waller, and others. We also composed our own modern tunes, a cross between mbhaqanga and bebop. Abdullah and Kippie were the most prolific composers, although Jonas and I contributed a few songs. Abdullah came up with a brilliant name for us: the Jazz Epistles. There had never been a group like the Epistles in South Africa. Our tireless energy, complex arrangements, tight ensemble play, languid slow ballads, and heart-melting, hymn-like dirges won us a following and soon we were breaking all attendance records in Cape Town. People would sit on the floor and around the edge of the bandstand at the Ambassadors when all the seats were filled. You literally had to walk sideways to move an inch. Reservations had to be made three or four days ahead, otherwise there was no way to get in.

  By the Christmas holiday season, the Jazz Epistles were the talk of Cape Town. The tourists, the township folks (coloreds and Africans) from Athlone, District Six, Goodwood, Langa, and all over the Cape Flats, flocked to see us. The wealthy white folks who had suntanned along the sandy beaches all crowded into the Ambassadors nightclub. And the women—lawd have mercy!—the most beautiful women of every color and shade filled the joint.

  One night Jonas and I kept noticing these two golden, suntanned white girls sitting at the foot of the bandstand in the shortest skirts imaginable—long before the appearance of the mini. They couldn’t keep their eyes off us, and every time we looked directly at them, they would flash us the biggest come-on smiles. These babes were fearless, but I was scared shitless. There was no way we could have these girls with the silly Immorality Act staring us in the face. I might have been crazy, but I wasn’t stupid. When our break came, Jonas and I rushed to the back of the club, but these girls were hot on our heels. When they caught up with us, they didn’t waste any time. Before I knew it, one of them had her tongue almost down my throat. She was kissing me passionately with her eyes closed and one hand on my johnson, while she put my hand on her G-stringed ass. When we finally came up for air, I asked, “Oooweee, what’s your name, baby?” “Rosalind, but you can call me Roz. Kiss me,” she gasped. We submerged one more time. By now I was about to explode. I can’t remember how long it was before Kippie, Makhaya, Johnny, and Abdullah finally came to the back. On hearing their approaching footsteps, we disengaged and the girls slid out of there, but not before Roz whispered, “We’ll see you after the show. I’m coming with you wherever you’re going.”

  “Oh shit, man, it looks like you two are fixing to go to jail, hey? Look at your fucking faces, then! Please take me with you,” Johnny Gertze joked. All of us burst out laughing as Jonas and I rushed to the bathroom to wash our faces. Roz and her friend, Denise, came to the Ambassadors almost every night. And Roz badly wanted to lay some trim on me. “What are you so scared of?” she asked me. I was too terrified. All I had on my mind was getting out of South Africa. The quest for the scholarship had me too obsessed to fuck around with something as dangerous as Roz. Anyway, one night, Spike, who was now head of the music department at the University of Cape Town, had a party at his house in Wynberg. Roz nailed me in one of the bedrooms. She locked the door and we threw down—except all the time we were getting down, I was more nervous than a broke-dick dog. “What are you so scared of?” she asked me as I kept looking at the window and the door. I just couldn’t reach a climax, and after a long time and many of her screams, which I tried to muffle, we joined the rest of the party. Every time she looked at me, she whispered, “Let’s go back.” All I could do was shake my head.

  In early January 1960, we decided to take the Jazz Epistles to Johannesburg. When I got home, my parents and three sisters had a warm welcome for me. Barbara was still on school holidays. It struck me that this was one of the few times that all six of us were together. It was nice having peace in our home. My parents were getting along better, and were now completely comfortable with my decision to be a musician. My grandmother Johanna had moved into her new home in Ennerdale. I was particularly happy to hang out and share confidences with Barbara, who was going to be nineteen in July. Two weeks later she returned to Durban for school. I would not see her again for four years.

  After almost four years of hounding Huddleston, I finally heard from Myrtle Berman that he’d written her that through the intercession of Yehudi Menuhin and Johnny Dankworth, I had been accepted to London’s Guildhall School of Music. The only obstacle standing in my way now was obtaining a passport.

  The Jazz Epistles played a few clubs around Johannesburg. We were also hustled into Gallo’s main studio one afternoon to record a long-playing album of some of our compositions. It was called The Jazz Epistles Verse I, the first such album by an African group. The only drag was that we were paid a measly seventy-six pounds for our hard work. Even though the recording took only two hours because we knew our music inside and out, we still felt we should have been paid much more. Of course this was a one-time project. Gallo did not sign us to a contract. The quick release of our album shot our popularity through the roof and we were booked into the Selborne Hall, a satellite of Johannesburg City Hall, for six weeks. Tickets for the shows sold out within a few days. This time we were making some good money. We scheduled equal performance days for whites and Africans
. In our shows there were no announcements; we just played wall-to-wall songs for three hours without a break. Our audiences were overwhelmed by our “awesome stamina, outstanding musicianship, and most of all, our Bohemian outfits,” as one journalist put it. I had already applied for a passport and was phoning the Pretoria Department of the Interior offices almost every day to find out when it would be issued. “We’ll call you,” was always the curt Afrikaans reply.

  We had just finished convincing Ian Bernhardt from the Union Artists to book us on a nationwide tour that was scheduled to begin in April. I was aching to go on the road and make more money so that I would have fat pockets should I leave for England. But things soured that March. I came home one day and my mother told me that she and my father were near the end of their marriage. My mother just came out with it: “Boy-Boy, I am going through hell living with your father. We have nothing left between us and it is painful to be here. I really don’t know what to do, my child.” The news floored me.

  Miriam Makeba was now living in New York, where she had become the toast of America, after making her debut on The Steve Allen Show. Following her first appearance at New York’s Village Vanguard, where celebrities like Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Marlon Brando, Sammy Davis Jr., Sydney Poitier, and Harry Belafonte, among others, came to see her perform, she went on to play America’s top nightclubs and concert halls with either Belafonte or the Chad Mitchell Trio. Miriam wrote to me often, enclosing rave press reviews of her performances. She also sent large packages of the latest U.S. jazz recordings, clothes, shoes, and letters from Dizzy Gillespie. She had told Dizzy all about me, and he started to send me albums by Miles, Monk, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Horace Silver, Duke, Sarah, and Nina. I was overjoyed by Miriam’s continuing generosity and deeply moved by her efforts on my behalf. More than that, I was ecstatically happy for her. The success she was achieving filled us all with pride back home. When I read excerpts of her letters to our colleagues and Drum magazine reporters at Dorkay House and in the shebeens, they were so overjoyed that they applauded, whooped, and hollered at the end of my reading. Miriam also said she had talked to Belafonte, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and John Mehegan about helping me get to New York for school.