Michael Cheers – författare

Hugh Masekela is a prodigiously talented giant of jazz and world music, and a pioneer in sharing the voice and spirit of South Africa with the rest of the world, but his globetrotting tale transcends music. First published in the USA in 2004, this autobiography shares with rich detail Masekela's life, infused with love and loss, sex and drugs, exile and revolution. He survived it all, with wit, passion, abundant talent and wisdom, and is now bringing his story back home! A new foreword and afterword to his autobiography will add fresh insights into the life of one of today's few living world-class artists and rare spirits. Still Grazing narrates a magical journey around the world in this epic, music-soaked tale of love, excess, exile and home. Masekela's life began in a South Africa haunted by violence, but redeemed by the consolations of family, music and adventure. As the grip of apartheid tightened, he was driven into exile and embarked on what would become a thirty-year pilgrimage around the world. His first stop was New York City, where he was adopted by legends such as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Harry Belafonte.Masekela lived through some of the most vital and colourful music scenes of our time: Blowing with bebop greats in New York, playing with a young Bob Marley in Jamaica, hanging out with Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone in the sixties, and getting lost in the madness of Fela's Afropop explosion in Lagos. He loved extravagantly, including marrying Miriam Makeba, experimented wildly with drugs and alcohol, and stumbled into adventure after adventure. And through the hit musical Sarafina (which he conceived with Mbongeni Ngema), the Graceland tour he spearheaded with Paul Simon, and his fearless on-theground activism, he worked tirelessly to add his voice to the antiapartheid movement. When he eventually returned to South Africa, he at last found the strength to confront the personal demons that had tracked him around the world, and attained a new measure of peace at home. Unfolding against the backbeat of the most revolutionary musical movements of the last forty years and one of the most inspiring political transformations of the twentieth century, this is the utterly engrossing and deeply effecting chronicle of a remarkable, one-of-a-kind life.All copies of the first print run will include Hugh Masekela's latest CD, Playing @ work.