Who Was Hugh Masekela? Google Doodle Celebrates Jazz Icon's 80th Birthday

The life of jazz icon Hugh Masekela was celebrated by Google Doodle on Thursday on the occasion of the musician's 80th birth anniversary. The world-renowned trumpeter died on Jan. 23, 2018, after a decade long fight with cancer.

Masekela, affectionately known locally as “Bra Hugh,” started playing the trumpet at 14. He quickly became an integral part of the 1950s jazz scene in Johannesburg as a member of the band the Jazz Epistles and a member of the orchestra in the groundbreaking jazz opera “King Kong.”

In its tribute to Masekela, Google wrote that at the age of 21, he began a 30-year exile, traveling to New York where he enrolled in the Manhattan School of Music. He observed jazz giants like John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Mingus, and Max Roach on a nightly basis.

“My biggest obsessions is to show African and the world who the people of Africa really are,” Masekela once said.

American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis once advised to Masekela: “You’re just going to be a statistic if you play jazz... but if you put in some of the stuff you remember from South Africa, you’ll be different from everybody.”

In the 1980s, Masekela appeared with Paul Simon and several other South African musicians as part of the Graceland album tour.

His award-winning "Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela)" from 1987 proved to be very popular, and became the anthem of choice upon Mandela's eventual long walk to freedom from Pollsmore Prison before being elected South Africa’s first black president.

"By the late ’60s he moved to Los Angeles, and performed at the Monterey Pop Festival on a bill that included Jimi Hendrix, Ravi Shankar, and The Who. His 1968 single 'Grazin’ in the Grass' hit #1 on the U.S. pop charts," Google wrote in its tribute. "Masakela would go on to collaborate with the likes of Fela Kuti, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, Paul Simon, and Stevie Wonder."