Still Grazing

by Hugh Masikela

  Back in Los Angeles, when I told Alan Pariser about the tour, he said, “Hughie, I’ve always wanted to bring a planeload of gold bullion out of Ghana. They also have some of the world’s best grass out there. If you can put it together on that side, I will supply the aircraft and the finance. Why don’t you check it out and get back to me?” It sounded very attractive because I was quite broke—I was eating pretty heavily into my Casablanca money with all my personal travels and expensive lifestyle. When I laid out Alan Pariser’s plan to Nga, he thought it was risky, but with the facilities Alan was making available and the connections we could hook up in Ghana, we might just pull it off. Miriam’s West African tour was the perfect foil for Alan Pariser’s adventurous idea, and I resolved to go through with it.

  Another golden opportunity was laid at my feet by my cousin Peter Vundla, who had recently graduated from Columbia Business School and had returned home to South Africa, where he climbed to the very top advertising executive levels. His wife’s family were highly successful entrepreneurs in Swaziland, where, together with him, they had planned a mega-festival in that country to take place right after Miriam’s tour, in early October. My band was to be one of the top featured acts at that festival. Although Neil Bogart was disenchanted with the direction of our latest album, he had nevertheless primed his staff to try to promote it. Bogart had hoped that at least this time we would tour the States to back up Casablanca’s marketing efforts. When he learned of my band’s plan to go to Africa again shortly after the album’s release, he was absolutely flabbergasted. I tried to convince him that we needed to market ourselves in Africa because it was our home, but Neil just looked at me in utter amazement. I was determined to do this tour with Miriam. Makeba was a goddess on that continent. Touring with her in Africa seemed to promise glory there, especially because in America I had more or less become a statistic. “Grazing in the Grass” seemed more and more like a last hurrah that would never be repeated again. Only Ekemode and Yaw Opoku sided with Bogart. The rest of the band members were very excited about returning to West Africa, even though our last visit there had been disastrous. They felt that with Miriam headlining, the sky was the limit. Bob Young joined the tour as OJAH’s manager.

  On the day I arrived, I was sitting with Miriam on Sister Gertie’s wraparound porch, planning the program for our concert tour the day after our arrival in Liberia, when two members of Monrovia’s large South African exile community, Tshidi and Skhumbuzo Ndamse, her husband, walked in. Her face was bruised in several places. She also had both eyes blackened. He had apparently beaten the shit out of her. I was shocked and infuriated because my parents had been at Kilnerton Training Institute with her mother. When I had mentioned her among the South Africans who were living in Monrovia, my mother had written back asking that I look out for her and the two Nyembezi brothers, because their parents were very good friends of hers and my father. I subsequently managed to speak to Tshidi alone and asked her if she wanted to continue to live with Skhumbuzo. She replied that she wanted a divorce, but lacked the means to engage a lawyer to represent her. I offered my assistance, and engaged Steve Dunbar, who had been Steve Tolbert’s lawyer for the Zaire festival, to represent her in filing for a divorce from her husband.

  One day soon after our arrival in Monrovia, Nga invited Bob and me over for lunch at his house. After the meal, Nga pulled out a half-liter bottle with a skull-and-crossbones label. He asked me if this might be the same stuff we had been snorting in Zaire during the music festival. He had gotten the powder from his second wife, Hilda, who was a doctor in Kinshasa. Bob, a licensed pharmacist, opened the bottle and sniffed some, then sampled the powder on his tongue. “Hughie, this is pure, unadulterated, pharmaceutical cocaine. If you gonna do some blow, you cannot snort anything finer than this flaky shit. It’s simply the best.” We couldn’t stop laughing. We hugged Nga and thanked him for turning us on.

  Nga said, “You crazy people spend so much money putting this stupid powder up your noses. Because you are friends, and I had access to what I thought was pure cocaine, I asked Hilda to get me some so I could save my stupid friend from spending his money foolishly. I hope you enjoy yourself with this bottle. Me, I have no time for such funny things. I will just stick to my beer and brandy. Snort and be merry, gentlemen. Cheers. I drink this beer to you.” We toasted with cognac, jumped into Nga’s Volkswagen Beetle, and sped off to a restaurant-bar just outside of town for drinks and further sampling of the coke, which we kept in a matchbox. The flaky stuff was amazing because it did not dissolve into liquid in spite of the very dense humidity. It remained in its powder form. Stanley Todd and the other guys were excited over this windfall.

  After two sold-out shows in Monrovia, we went to perform in Togo, where our concert was sold out, but we were bumped off our flight back to Liberia the next day. Eyadema, the president, held a grudge toward Miriam because she had been a close friend of the former president, Olympio, whose assassination he had engineered. He harbored even deeper resentment for Sekou Toure, who was his prime critic. Since Miriam, Philemon, and I were traveling on Guinean passports, it gave the Togolese officials immense pleasure to frustrate us in this way. We finally flew out of Lome airport in Togo two days later, and headed back to Monrovia, where the band was the toast of the town. We were just living on naps, hardly sleeping. This madness truly amused Chuchu and all our friends in Monrovia, because even though they were famous for their own craziness, they had never seen a crazier bunch of nuts.

  Our next stop was Dakar, Senegal, where, at the very last minute, Miriam was forbidden to travel because of an age-old enmity between Sekou Toure and Senegalese President Leopold Senghor, whom Sekou considered a puppet of France. We played two sold-out concerts at the Serrano theater and another grand concert at the stadium, along with Xalam Deux, the pioneers of mbalax music, which has since been popularized universally by the Senegalese vocalist Youssou Ndour.

  Miriam rejoined us in Benin, where the concerts were again a success. On the morning of our departure for Liberia, President Kerekou summoned Miriam and me and the concert promoter, Dagortey, to his office. Kerekou was notorious at the time for being a tyrannical, murderous, despotic autocrat. We were terrified. He came into the room where we had been waiting, sat down, and starred coldly at us for almost an hour without uttering a word. Finally he spoke in deep French: “I am angry and I find it difficult to speak. I cannot begin to fathom how two revered comrades of the African struggle for liberation can come to our beloved revolutionary republic and not be presented to me. That they can perform in this country without the participation, blessings, and presence of government members at their spectacles is a source of shame to me. I have been received in Guinea by my beloved brother, Comrade Sekou Toure, with so much love, pomp, and fanfare. How then am I supposed to explain to my comrade brother the absence of an official reception for these two revolutionary soldiers? Dagortey, you have shamed me beyond redemption with this contemptuous action. Were it not for the love of these two honorable comrades, I should have you sequestered and duly meted out the punishment you deserve for the treasonable act you have committed. I called you here, my beloved comrades, Makeba and Masekela, to apologize to you for this embarrassment our country has been subjected to, and belatedly welcome you to our land. As for Dagortey, he should give thanks to you for his life. Go forth into the world and continue your valuable work for our beloved continent. Please return soon so that we may afford you the due and truly respectful reception you deserve. Au revoir! Prêt pour la Révolution!”

  Kerekou rose, turned around, and left the room with a pronounced military gait and the angriest expression on his hard face. We breathed a collective sigh of relief. A few hours later Philemon, Miriam, and I were on the plane headed back to Liberia for a show at the stadium. The audience reaction was overwhelming. They just couldn’t get enough of Miriam Makeba and OJAH.

  Altogether the tour worked out great for OJAH. After the last show in Monrovia, we were scheduled f
or the festival that my cousin Peter Vundla had contracted us for in Swaziland, but the event was aborted because the South African government was preventing the majority of the audience, which would be coming from that country, to leave for Swaziland. Neither our airplane tickets nor the money that was supposed to be sent to Chuchu at the Bank of Liberia ever materialized. This made a very big hole in our pockets. Ekemode, Guy Warren, Yaw, and Adelaja decided to return to the States. They were finally disenchanted with OJAH, and told me so in no uncertain terms, especially Yaw and Ekemode, who had been vehemently opposed to the tour from the very beginning. The $60,000 Swaziland payday, which had been an additional justification for the trip, had flown out the window; I was not in too much of an enviable position now because even some members of this great band, which a few months ago had a very promising future, were now jumping ship.

  Just before the West African tour, we had completed an album called Melody Maker in Washington, D.C. Stewart had flown in from Los Angeles to produce the album, and every evening after we left the studio, Stewart, Bob, and I would go to Stewart’s hotel or Bob’s apartment and consume loads of cocaine, marijuana, and tequila. It would be the last album Stewart produced for me. He had reached the end of his tether with our crazy friendship and was slowly trying to change his life and put more focused effort into sobriety. Chuck Kaye, our music publisher, who himself was a reformed nut, had told Stewart to “stop wasting your time with these crazy motherfuckers,” referring to people like myself, Alan Pariser, and most of Stewart’s other acquaintances.

  It was now time for me to deliver my last album for Casablanca Records before my contract with the company expired. I decided to make it in Kumasi, Ghana, where Stanley and Frankie Todd told me there was a very good studio. Stanley, Frankie, Jagger, and Okyerema went ahead to set up recording schedules while I stayed in Liberia and slowly began a relationship with Tshidi, who was now divorced. Bob Young returned to Washington for a short spell to pack his bags because he was now determined to settle in Africa. He loved it. Nga and I began to prepare the groundwork for the gold-and-grass airlift with Alan Pariser. We spoke with him over the phone a few times, then he sent over an associate partner for the deal, Ron Scoggins, who was an old friend of Stewart’s and mine. Ron, Nga, and I went to Ghana to make connections with Al Hajji, the grass farmer up in Kumasi, and an architect in Accra who had very strong ties with people high up in the gold mining community of Ghana. He gave us an ounce of raw gold as a sample for Ron to go and check out with Alan back in Los Angeles. It proved to be of high purity, and Ron came back for more preparations. Back in Monrovia, Nga and I had arranged for the Gulfstream jet to have landing rights before proceeding on to Kumasi, where our architect friend had arranged a landing permit.

  One day, back in Accra, I was visiting Geraldo Pino, the Sierra Leonean bandleader of the Heartbeats, a popular West African group, in his room at the Ringway Hotel, when the owner and manager, Mama Akufo-Addo, burst in and started having a lighthearted debate with Pino. It was a jovial and humorous argument in which he finally threatened her, “I will turn loose Hugh Masekela on you if you don’t stop bothering me.” “This little harmless thing?” she said, eyeing me nonchalantly. “You must be joking.” Before Mama knew what had hit her, I playfully pulled her down onto the bed I was sitting on, jumped on top of her, and began to kiss her all over the neck and face until she was begging me for mercy. Stunned and breathing heavily from my aggressive flirtation, Mama got up and, in her clipped Oxford English, jokingly expressed her outrage at my roguish behavior. Pino laughed, “I told you not to mess with me.” Pino and I were in stitches.

  Mama must have gotten my number from Pino, because around five the next morning, she burst through my open door at the Tesano Gardens and did exactly what I had done to her the night before. But Mama wasn’t playing. We attacked each other for the next two hours. Still dripping with perspiration, Mama dressed quickly. She complained, “Masekela, a person of your stature has no business staying in a dive such as this. I want you to pack your belongings and come stay at the Ringway with me.” Soon Mama and I were inseparable. She had been educated in England, but her mother was a royal princess of one of the Akwapem ruling dynasties, and her father, Edward Akufo-Addo, was Ghana’s president following Kwame Nkrumah. Mama only objected to my heavy drinking and drugging. My vices aside, a few months later she and I, along with her five-year-old daughter, Khaddy, moved into a beautiful home in Kokomlemle, and for several years Mama and I had a tumultuous relationship. Under different circumstances, perhaps we could have jelled and built something special. But I was in no shape emotionally or spiritually to put down roots in a serious relationship. Any time the phrase “Hugh, I need you” was spoken or implied by any woman, I retreated to my debauchery.

  Okyerema Asante introduced Stanley Todd and me to a young business tycoon named Jojo Fosu. He was interested in collaborating with us on music-related projects and promotions. We decided to start a record company, and the first artist we signed was Miatta Fahbulleh. Miatta had great potential. She was strikingly beautiful and had a lovely, sultry voice. Through Sierra Leonean percussionist Francis Fuster, who had worked with Miatta before, we were able to put together Baranta, a band he played with in Lagos. We also managed to get studio time at the EMI complex in the Lagos suburb of Apapa with Fela’s assistance. In Lagos, Fela took us out nightly to meet and hear other musicians. He particularly enjoyed taking me to hear King Sunny Ade and Colonel Ebenezer Obeyi, two of the country’s wealthiest musicians. The joy for me, however, was being in Fela’s company and sharing thoughts with him. We would talk for hours, sometimes until dawn, about the corrupt administrations in different countries all over Africa whose peoples were suffering from the tyranny of their power-hungry dictators.

  Fela was also having major clashes with the current military government led by Olusegun Obasanjo. His songs that castigated the corruption of the administration were extremely popular with the young and the poor, and led to his periodic imprisonment and to abuse from police and soldiers against him and his followers, but his humor and stunning brilliance, his musical genius and his biting sense of absurdity, transcended all these obstacles.

  “Hugh, this Obasanjo’s people are no different from those who harassed me during Gowon’s regime. Gowon started this confrontation against me with the army because I sang about the corruption of this country’s establishment. I think that what really pissed him off more than anything is when I bought a small donkey and named him Gowon. The people used to come and stand outside my yard to watch me ride Gowon from my house to the African Shrine Club. They used to laugh their asses off every time I said, ‘C’mon, Gowon, walk faster,’ while sitting on the donkey’s back. Word about this daily spectacle got to him, and that is when my troubles started.”

  I asked him about the present administration. Fela laughed. “These Obasanjo boys hate me even more because he was a couple of classes behind me in my father’s school, and I don’t let him forget it. He is out to kill me, this one, but I won’t stop singing about his government’s sick corruption.” The military regime hated him for this and put fire under his ass whenever it could, which was almost always.

  “What about the other artists?” I asked. “Doesn’t Sunny Ade or Ebenezer Obeyi say anything about government corruption?”

  “Hugh, those people are friends of the big shots. All their songs sing praises of rich men, chiefs, and individuals who are in power. The people they sing about dress in their most expensive lace boubous and go out dancing in those nightclubs to hear their names being immortalized. When they enter the venues, these musicians begin to sing about what wonderfully miraculous people they are. Then these fucking big shots, who have come with suitcases full of money, gradually throw it all onstage, competing against each other to see who will fork out the most cash. Colonel Ebenezer Obeyi makes a hundred times more money than you and me combined, just from deifying these big-shot monkeys. He never has to travel outside Lagos. They all c
ome to his club to hear their names being lifted up to the status of gods. Ebenezer makes millions right there in his garden club. That is why he didn’t know you when I introduced you to him. He doesn’t listen to other people’s records. His whole life is dedicated to learning the names of big shots, their families, and the heroic deeds he makes up for them. They lap it up and flock to his club. Why the fuck should he care about you and me? Colonel Ebenezer Obeyi? What an African phenomenon! This is life’s cruel irony, my friend.”

  Fela loved paradoxes like this one. These two world-class musicians, who were almost totally unknown outside Nigeria, fascinated him.

  We soon returned to Ghana with Miatta’s new album completed, and I went back to Liberia with her. By now our romantic relationship was practically over with. In Monrovia, I hung out even more with Tshidi. In September 1976, Asante, Jagger, Stanley, Frankie, and I went up to Kumasi and began to record our last album for Casablanca. Miriam Makeba joined us in Kumasi, and we simultaneously recorded an album for her, which would be called Country Girl. It had covers of old South African township songs such as “Mbube,” the lion-hunt song written in the 1920s by Solomon Linda. In the 1950s and 1960s it had become a folk-music hit after being performed by the Weavers under the title “Wimoweh.” Millions of records were sold in numerous versions but Solomon Linda died a pauper. In South Africa’s music history, this song represents the worst example of artist exploitation. “Country Girl,” a rhumba shuffle I co-wrote with Stanley Todd, had a bridge heavily influenced by the Mandingo-griot style of Salif Keita, which is extremely popular folk music in Senegal, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Mali. “The African Convention” was a rhythm-and-blues-cum-mbhaqanga dance shuffle with lyrics way ahead of their time, about the African Union initiative that is just now starting to captivate the continent’s politicians. The cover of the Harari-Beaters’ “Inhlupeko Iphelile” (The End of Poverty), which became one of the anthems of township youth during the 1976 student uprisings, was one of the album’s highlights. We could not complete Country Girl in Ghana, and opted to do the rest of it in New York with some of the cast of Ipi Tombi, a box-office smash South African revue that was showing to turn-away crowds on Broadway. OJAH’s album was called You Told Your Mama Not to Worry, and it included “Soweto Blues,” which I wrote as a tribute to the students who refused to accept Afrikaans as the language of school instruction in all subjects. It had a bluesy verse sung in English, and the bridge went into a Xhosa protest shout admonishing the adults for not joining in when the children were throwing stones at military tanks as they were being mowed down by machine-gun fire. It has remained a popular item in Miriam’s repertoire.