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MY 1968 ROLLERCOASTER RIDE with Chris Calloway came to haunt my judgment badly from then on—only I didn’t realize how addictive, impulsive, selfish, and totally insensitive I had become about the feelings of those who had my welfare at heart. I had slowly changed into a greedy, ugly bastard, probably out of a deep bitterness instilled by the failure of our partnership, something I had sincerely hoped would finally translate into a very blissful life. That totally the opposite had happened left me so subconsciously wounded that I could not find beauty in anything whatsoever. To anesthetize that pain, all that really mattered to me was the procurement of as much good cocaine, pussy, alcohol, and smoke as I could possibly consume, only to wake up wherever I had gone down and to start all over again.
When Herb Alpert suggested we bring back Caiphus and Stewart to produce our next album, I replied glibly, “No, we can do it ourselves.” I was so high I wasn’t even listening to what I was saying. In fact, I was on my way to score some cocaine and then meet with one or another of the women I was seeing at the time. I believe Herb Alpert was optimistic about my possibly changing my life as time went by, thinking that I would finally realize the opportunity he had opened up for our potential as a duo. Herb was not only overly accommodating, but also unreasonably generous, trying his utmost to see that Jonas and I were always comfortable. We were living in giant chalets at the Chateau Marmont, and had a twenty-four-hour limousine service and an unlimited expense account—we were truly living the life. I was just taking, giving nothing in return. We finally got around to producing the album. After spending about six weeks in the studio, Main Event, a simulated live-performance recording, could best be described as a damp squid.
In the spring of 1978, Barbara said to me, “Hugh, we haven’t seen our mother in a couple of decades. You are really in a good position to bring her now. Send her a ticket and let her come and see us. It will be the greatest thing you could do for your mother, boy.” That July we brought our mother to Los Angeles. I also sent for Selema from New York. I hadn’t seen Polina in eighteen years. It was the most wonderful reunion. The four of us stayed in the Chateau Marmont’s largest luxury bungalow, with four bedrooms. I arranged for a car to take my mother, Barbara, and Selema sightseeing all over Los Angeles County and on Sundays to drive my mother to the local Catholic church to worship. She was overjoyed to be with her children after such a long time, and we could not have enough of her wonderful cooking.
While I was in the studio recording Main Event, Barbara learned about our sisters Elaine and Sybil, Grandma Johanna, my father, and the rest of our family from spending long hours talking to our mother. At night she would bring me up to date when I returned from the studio. I did manage to spend the weekends and mornings with Selema and Polina, even taking them to Disneyland one day. I had never been to any of the favorite tourist stops in America in the eighteen years I had been there.
All of my friends and many of my girlfriends—Stewart and Jolie, Zakes Mokae, Lionel Ngakane, Calvin Lockhart, Barbara Alston, Celeste Peters, Azizi Johari, Vertamae Grosvenor, Larry Willis, Jonas, Carrie White, and Caiphus and Letta—all came by to meet Polina. My mother’s cooking had some of them coming by almost every day until she had to ask me one day, “My child, don’t some of your friends have homes?”
I taught Selema to swim at the Chateau Marmont’s gigantic pool, and he became so obsessed that at six in the morning he’d be standing at my bedside dressed in his swimsuit and goggles, saying, “Dad, let’s go to the swims.” Today he is a surfing champion and a water and winter sports commentator for ESPN.
Herb Alpert invited my mother and me to lunch at his home, and took a beautiful photo of the two of us, which he sent to me years later. I treasure it dearly.
Polina was shocked at the wrinkly old ladies wearing hot pants all over Los Angeles. “My children, how can you live among these naked grandmothers? This is a very bad omen and a source of bad luck. It is no wonder that so many unfortunate incidents took place in your lives. This is absolutely shameful.” She also told us how difficult it had been to hold down her job as head of the African Child Welfare in Johannesburg during the 1976 student uprisings. Given the cruel disposition of the apartheid machinery toward dissidents, keeping a balance between initiating welfare care and not treading on the toes of the white administrative heads she was working under had been very stressful.
My mother and father were also under obvious pressure from the apartheid government’s intelligence police, because Barbara was a leading member of the African National Congress hierarchy and very active with other colleagues in pressuring U.S. and European businesses to disinvest in South Africa, lobbying against the South African government at the United Nations, participating in demonstrations, and delivering strategic talks at forums in solidarity with our liberation struggle. She persuaded many influential Americans to support the battle being waged by oppressed South Africans. My records had long been banned by the South African broadcasting media, and my condemnation of the South African government in print and broadcast interviews did not help to endear me to the apartheid regime. They hated my protest songs.
My parents first knew Winnie Mandela when she worked on her final social work study under my mother’s guidance at Entokozweni Family Welfare Center in Alexandra Township. Later on, when her husband was imprisoned at Robben Island, my father kept in close touch with her, and visited her regularly at her place of banishment in Brandfort. This infuriated the overlords of apartheid.
Since 1958, Winnie had been harassed, banned, and detained (often in solitary confinement) on numerous charges that ranged from demonstrating against the issuing of passes for women, promoting the ANC, attending political gatherings, and promoting communism. She was first banned for two years and restricted to Johannesburg. As a result, she lost her job with the Child Welfare Society. A banned person was prohibited from associating with other banned persons and from having more than one person at a time in her place of residence. In 1977, a month before the first anniversary of the Soweto uprisings, Winnie was arrested at her home in Soweto for violating the anti-terrorism act, and was banished to Brandfort, an impoverished little township in the middle of the Orange Free State. The homes of both my mother and father were often raided. Drawers and closets in every room were trashed, ransacked, and destroyed as agents of the intelligence department searched for evidence pertaining to treasonable activities. “Where is your bloody daughter?” the agents would scream as they violently destroyed part of the house. “Where is that fucking son of yours, Hugh?” My mother told us about these raids while Selema, Barbara, and I listened in shocked amazement. My sisters Sybil and Elaine, my nieces and nephews, my grandma and my father, also related these stories to us when they visited us in Lesotho, Botswana, and Zimbabwe during our years in exile in the 1980s, and more so when we returned home in 1990.
This visit to the United States could not have come at a better time for my mother. That she was allowed to leave the country was in itself a miracle. For Polina, it was “God’s gift” to be able to reunite with her oldest children after almost two decades. Her life had been difficult: raising Sybil and Elaine alone; caring for my grandmother Johanna; witnessing the destruction of my younger sisters’ marriages to alcoholic, abusive siblings and its negative effects on her grandchildren; and enduring the lingering pain of her divorce from my father. Even though the joy of being with Barbara and me resuscitated her soul and spirit, the trials and tribulations of South Africa had carved wrinkles in Polina’s psyche. The weary lines etched along my mother’s face revealed years of silent tears and heartache.
After a memorable month in Los Angeles, Barbara, my mother, and Selema returned to New York. I joined them in New York two weeks later, when the recording with Herb was completed. As in Los Angeles, my mother met many of our friends and colleagues. We took her to all the city’s tourist attractions. After a tearful farewell from Barbara, Polina came with me to my seaside home in Liberia, where she
spent time with Tshidi and me. She coddled little Pula and sang her the lullabies she had probably sung for my sisters and me when we were babies. My mother especially bonded with Mabusha, whom she had been endlessly asking about in Los Angeles and New York City. She found it hard to fathom why he was not with us. Sister Gertie and Polina hit it off like they had always known each other. Sister Gertie took her to have lunch with President Tolbert who wanted to meet her. They apparently spoke for hours. My mother was very touched and inspired by the fact that she had dined with an African president, something that was utterly impossible in her own country. When my mother left for South Africa at the beginning of September, she was a different person, fulfilled, overjoyed, and feeling blessed to have seen her children again, and politically more radical from having been with Barbara and me and all of our friends. Although she was apprehensive about returning to racist South Africa, her heart was truly at rest from the satisfaction of finding both of us in good health—but she was curious about the funny smell coming from my bedroom from time to time. “What are you children burning in there?” she would ask. If my heavy drinking disturbed her, she did not mention it, but deep down it must have hurt her terribly because most of her family had died from alcohol-related illnesses, and the bestial cruelty of the merciless apartheid regime. Many of those overlords, lawmakers, and police were themselves pathetic alcoholics and drug addicts. It was a sad day to say good-bye to my mother at Roberts Field in Monrovia.
On arrival back in South Africa, Polina was met by mournful relatives who told her that Kenneth, her favorite brother-in-law, whom she had helped to raise from his late teens until his marriage to Aunt Bellie, had been brutally murdered the previous month behind his store in Kwa-Thema, Springs. His remains had to be literally scraped off the ground. Our family had not wanted to convey the sad news to us while my mother was visiting; they didn’t want to spoil her vacation. She was shattered. Uncle Kenneth had been like an older brother to Barbara and me. Barbara called me from New York to tell me the sad news. She had received a long letter from my mother. Barbara also told me that Kenneth had written her a letter that she had received shortly after we departed for Liberia, in which he said he was looking forward to a trip he was planning to America to visit us.
I went to Ghana and spent two weeks with Mama Akuff-Addo. A few days after my return, Chuchu called me. He said he needed to see me urgently at his office at the Bank of Liberia. I drove over there with my nephew Mabusha. Chuchu had a blank expression on his face. He told me to sit down and remain calm. He handed me a telegram. It was from my father. “Your mother lost her life in a motor accident a few days ago. We’ll be burying her over the weekend. Be strong. Love, Papa.”
I sat there stunned as Chuchu searched for something to say. “Hugh, isn’t it strange that when my mother died, you brought me the bad news? Now I have to do the same for you.”
I left the car parked outside the bank and walked aimlessly around downtown Monrovia with Mabusha at my side, holding the telegram in his hand. After walking for a little while, I would say, “Let me see that thing again.” I read the telegram, shook my head in disbelief, and began walking again. I did this several times until Mabusha finally suggested, “Uncle Hugh, why don’t we go back home?”
It was only then that I realized just how stunned I really was. “Yeah, let’s walk back to the car,” I said. Back at the house on the beach, I called Jessie, Selema’s mother. She and Barbara had a close friendship. “Jessie, please get over to Barbara’s with some of her friends and tell her about our mother. I know you’re the best person for her to be with at this time.”
That evening Barbara called. She was calm, and begged me, “Hugh, don’t hold it all in, and try not to act so strong. Cry. Please cry and let it out.” To this day, I have never been able to cry for my mother. The fact that Barbara and I could not fly home to bury our mother really hardened my emotional reaction to her demise. My hatred for the apartheid government reverberated through my body. I swore to myself that I would not rest until it was brought down. I would do all that I could do to assist those elements that were engaged in bringing about its eventual elimination. However, this did not lead me toward thinking about changing my life. Instead, I was embittered into escalating my drinking, drugging, and womanizing. My mother’s demise radicalized my political activism even more. I never believed the official explanation given about the car accident. Sunday, the day before the “accident,” Sybil, Elaine, and their children had celebrated my mother’s return. The next morning she drove her normal route to work. While crossing a railroad track, her car stalled and a train hit it. I’ll go to my grave believing the South African government was involved in my mother’s death.
I sent Pula and Tshidi to South Africa to represent Barbara and me at my mother’s funeral. The Home Affairs Minister of Liberia insisted that an escort from his department accompany them, because my daughter and I were Liberian citizens and the apartheid government couldn’t be trusted. Two weeks later my father telephoned and told me that Tshidi and her three siblings had missed the funeral.
When Tshidi returned to Monrovia with Pula, after being away for about a month, things fell apart between us. We engaged in bitter arguments about my infidelity and her negligence in burying my mother, which led Mabusha to move back to Philly’s house. Little Pula, who was now only about ten months old, was this beautiful, happy baby who was always smiling and hardly ever cried. Her little life had been so blissful and full of joy until now. I wondered if deep down in her infant heart she could make any sense at all of all that was happening around her.
Shattered, angry, and ashamed, I returned to New York with only my trumpet and a few clothes in a small bag. Tshidi did not stay long in the house, but moved with Pula to a small flat in town.
I took over a furnished apartment on 107th Street and Broadway that belonged to a friend of Quincy Troupe’s who had moved out to L.A. All I had was my clothing, a keyboard, a stereo, and my trumpet. When I was working with Herb Alpert, I used to drop in at Mikell’s, a club at 97th Street and Columbus Avenue. At one time the proprietors, Pat and Mike Mikell, had asked me to play the club for a few days. I’d put together a group with the bistro’s resident pianist Don Blackman, drummer Omar Hakim, bassist Richard Allen, and saxophonist René McLean. It had been a quickly assembled group of musicians who needed only one day’s rehearsal to learn songs like “Grazing in the Grass”; “The Healing Song,” from my Ooga Booga album; “The Marketplace,” which I had recorded with Hedzoleh Soundz, Stix Hooper, and Joe Sample; and a few other compositions by Blackman, McLean, and Hakim. We played in the style of the massively successful group with whom I’d recorded “Grazing in the Grass”—a jazz quintet with a major flavor of township mbhaqanga and rhythm and blues. Hearing that I was back from Africa and living in New York, Mike Mikell asked me to play his club again. With South African bassist Victor Ntoni, young drummer Poogie Bell, Don Blackman, and René McLean, we began to play Mikell’s almost every other weekend to packed houses.
Apart from the fact that Mikell’s was one of New York’s most reputable jazz clubs, my own reputation as a musician appeared to have been resurrected. The audiences loved what we were doing, and returned regularly every weekend, bringing along new recruits. Oscar Cohen at ABC Booking also sent us out on the road on the East Coast and in the Midwest and Canada. I was making a considerable return to the music scene, and it was helping me to revive my self-esteem and get over my mother’s sudden passing.
Hotep Galeta, who was now living in New York, joined our group as an additional keyboardist. We began to attract many other musicians who would come and sit in almost every night. Many of them were young disciples of Don Blackman. Bassist Marcus Miller, guitarists Bobby Brown and Jeffrey Eubanks, and even fifteen-year-old pianist Bernard Johnson, were all so young that Mike Mikell was terribly nervous, thinking the police would come in one day and take his license away because he allowed minors to perform in his establishment. We soon replaced ba
ssist Victor Ntoni with young Victor Bailey, who came to sit in with us at a club we were playing in Boston while he was studying at the Berklee College of Music. “You need me, man, Hugh,” he said to me. He was right. The group became stronger after Victor joined us. Bassist Alex Blake and his younger brother, also an outstanding bass player, both did stints in our group. Stevie Wonder also came in to jam with us a few times. Happily, he was back down to earth, and nothing like the way he’d been when we were trying to contract him for the Zaire festival. He sang popular R&B standards by his Motown colleagues and other composers and artists whose work he loved, and we would blow with him. Stevie was an outstanding jazz accompanist. Sometimes he would whip out his beloved harmonica and throw down, bringing the house to its feet. The cast of Ipi Tombi would come by after their show on Broadway and join us on songs such as “Stimela,” “Bajabula Bonke,” and other traditional songs that I had learned from Miriam and Bongi. The joint was always jumping when we played Mikell’s.
Quincy Troupe was a regular at Mikell’s, always bringing his artist, poet, and writer friends like Ishmael Reed, Terri McMillan, Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Felipe Luciano, Ntozake Shange, Amiri Baraka, and Nikki Giovanni. It was a thrill to be once again part of this small but influential community—the folks who finally drove the racially prejudiced literary world to open its doors to nonwhite writing talent. The great James Baldwin always came to our shows at Mikell’s when he was in town. He spent a lot of time at the club because his brother David was the head barman there.
I was spending a lot of time with Quincy, who got us a great number of university gigs through several of his friends who headed African Studies departments where he regularly did poetry readings and talks on literature. Quincy was living with Margaret Porter, a fine lady from Mississippi who was a colleague of Jabu’s at the New York Times. This led to a reunion with Jabu, who lived across Columbus Avenue from Mikell’s, at Park West Village. She too became a regular at the club.
Still Grazing Page 42