This small circle of friends—Pat, Sonny, Todd, and Esme—had been a pillar for me during my summer in London; they had made it easier for me not to miss South Africa so much. Developments back home were just too depressing for anyone to miss, anyway. My mother wrote me regularly with updates: members of the Special Branch had been to our home looking for me and had shown unconcealed embarrassment when told that I had slipped away without their knowledge. The Bermans were still in jail along with thousands of other detainees.
After I cleared customs before my flight, I was tempted to call Pat, but felt it would be pointless. Instead, I went to the lounge bar and soaked my sorrows in several triple scotch whiskies. Heartbreak had me so numb I couldn’t even get high. I boarded my American Airlines flight with a pounding headache and settled in my seat, crying on the inside for Pat.
As we flew over Newfoundland, my spirits lifted and excitement about coming to America flooded me. I realized that I had not had a drop of liquor during the entire flight. While I was in London, my desire to drink had diminished as I had become closer to Pat. Happiness had helped me to move away from booze without even realizing it.
8
I QUICKLY CLEARED IMMIGRATION at Idlewilde (now JFK) International Airport and, after a nervous walk through the terminal, approached a set of clear glass doors with the American morning waiting for me on the other side. Before I could ponder my next momentous step into a new world, the doors silently slid open on their own and the music of New York chaos breezed in on cool autumn air, an amazement. Miriam had called me before I left London to say that she would be away on tour with Harry Belafonte when I arrived, but that someone would meet me at the East Side Terminal in Manhattan. I was sitting on the bus riding through Jamaica, Queens, a twenty-one-year-old from Witbank on my way to mythic Manhattan, when it finally hit me: I smiled to myself and whispered die dlladla my ma hoor my—this is America, I swear by my mother’s living soul.
When the bus pulled into the East Side Terminal, I calmly remained in my seat while everyone else disembarked. The bus driver, noticing that my suitcase was the only one left in the hold of the bus, came back into the vehicle and said to me, “Where are you going, buddy?” “I’m going to New York City, sir,” I said. “This is New York City, my good friend,” the driver said. “You won’t find another one.”
I stood up in disbelief and slowly stepped off the bus. Nothing around me looked like the sparkling New York City I had seen in the picture books or the movies. Everything was drab, dingy, and dark inside the terminal building. A smiling, light-skinned African man in a navy blue suit with a maroon silk tie over a white shirt walked up to me. He was already holding my suitcase. “Come on, Hughie,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
The man was Mburumba Kerina, a fellow exile and friend of Miriam, who had come to pick me up. I followed him to a cab. He told me he was SWAPO’s chief representative at the United Nations—SWAPO, the South West Africa People’s Party, was petitioning the United Nations for the liberation of South West Africa (now Namibia). He was married to Jane Miller, an African-American woman from California who was also very active in the Namibian liberation campaign, and together they had two kids, Kakuna, their four-year-old daughter, and Mandume, a boy of two. Jane was expecting the couple’s third child. The Kerinas had become friends with Miriam after they attended one of her performances at the Village Vanguard. We rode up Third Avenue to 336 East 82nd Street, between First and Second Avenues, where Miriam was renting a basement apartment.
Driving up Third Avenue, I responded to all of Mburumba’s stories about Namibia and the UN and his family with one question: “Is this really Manhattan?” I couldn’t believe this was the same New York City I had heard about and seen in movies. From the taxi it was a blur of people in the millions scampering to work, dirty streets, buses, taxis, and shabby tenement buildings, open manholes, and newly dug ditches with hundreds of men in hard hats working on construction sites and street paving gangs. Signs all over read, DIG WE MUST FOR A BETTER NEW YORK. Police cars and fire engines with screaming sirens hurried to one crisis or another, battling to get through the congested traffic. Window washers hung suspended on scaffolding high up against buildings whose windows were sixty stories up in the air. Blaring car horns, stuttering air hammers, screeching tires, screaming voices; street sweepers; garbage collectors running to and from grubby, noisy garbage trucks, toting gigantic plastic bags and cans of trash; cyclists, joggers, and dog shit on the sidewalk—I could not believe the pandemonium. I quietly wondered if I had made the right decision by coming to America. Was this madness worth all the trouble I had gone through?
Since they lived five blocks away, at 77th and Second Avenue, Miriam spent a lot of time with the Kerinas. Bongi, Miriam’s daughter, had become like their other child. When Mburumba and I finally arrived in Miriam’s pad, Bongi was there—more than excited to see me. She jumped into my arms—“Malume, Hugh!”—and launched into a fusillade of Zulu, already broken even though she had only been in America nine months. I had last seen Bongi with her grandmother at Dorkay House, where they had come to make final preparations for her travel plans to New York, so she could join her mother. Bongi was eager to hear about her relatives back home, but mostly how her cousins Nhlanhla, Nongobozi, and Thupazile were doing. Unfortunately, I had last seen these kids in 1956 when Miriam and I started our torrid love affair. I could only say to Bongi that I was certain they were all very well, although I couldn’t explain why I had not seen them lately. Bongi was crestfallen I had not come bearing any tidings for her from Nhlanhla and her grandmother.
When Miriam was away, Leslie Reed, an aspiring Puerto Rican actress, singer, and dancer, looked after Bongi with the help of Jean Johnson, another aspiring singer from Harlem. The two women were always auditioning, but never seemed to get hired, so Miriam was helping them earn a few dollars by having them look after the apartment and Bongi while she was on the road. Jean was tall, dark, and quite attractive. Originally from the South, she was crazy about B. B. King and Ray Charles. Leslie had light skin, straight hair, and a dancer’s body, and spoke with the rat-a-tat relentlessness of a typewriter. Leslie came from a close-knit family, and spoke to her mother on the phone several times a day in breakneck Nuyorican Spanish.
I had been in the house a few hours when Miriam called from Las Vegas. She was excited that I had arrived safely, but would be away for another three weeks. She insisted that I make myself at home, and asked me to help Bongi with her homework because she was just beginning to learn English. With the new, inferior Bantu education for African children back home, Bongi had only been instructed in the ethnic languages before coming to America. My task was to decipher this new world Bongi was entering into Zulu first, and then teach her the English equivalent so that she could cope at her new school, the Downtown Community School in the East Village.
That evening Leslie took me to the Jazz Gallery on East Eighth Street, where Dizzy Gillespie was sharing a bill with Thelonious Monk. When we walked in, the set was already on. Cheeks fully extended, Dizzy was playing with Lalo Schifrin on piano, Rudy Stevens on drums, Mike White on bass, and Leo Wright on saxophone. He had just returned from South America, and you could hear the Brazilian influences in the music his band played: “Desifinado,” “One Note Samba,” the theme from Black Orpheus, and other hot Brazilian compositions. Between songs he spotted me in the audience and smiled at me from the stage, nodding as if he’d been expecting me. Right after his set, he walked to our table and greeted me like a long-lost brother. “Oooweee,” he said, “wait till Lorraine hears about this.” This jazz legend of bebop and I hugged—he told me how glad he was that I had finally gotten out of the apartheid hellhole and was relieved we didn’t have to write each other veiled and coded letters anymore. “Now we can talk about those bastards in South Africa without fear,” he said, bursting into his patented laugh and high-pitched “Oooweee.”
Thelonious Monk walked in and was heading toward the stage when Diz
zy stood up and stopped him. “Hey, Thel, I want you to meet Hughie Masekela. He’s the South African trumpet player I told you about. He just got in this morning from London.” Monk was wearing his black sunglasses and customary black suit, black shirt, and mini-porkpie hat. He gave me a limp handshake and uttered an unintelligible, high-pitched whine, “Nyiii,” then walked away. I never saw his eyes behind those dark sunglasses, just my own confused stare looking back at myself. Dizzy hollered at him, “You was born dead, Thel. You hear me? Born daaeeiid.” He turned to Leslie and me, “Don’t mind him. He’s a born actor. He’s got the biggest mouth in the world, oooweee.” I was in music heaven, meeting people I had idolized for years. I was dazzled but tongue-tied, especially after Monk’s weird introduction.
“Let’s pop over to the Five Spot, across Third Avenue. Mingus and Max Roach are playing there. Max really wants to meet you, oooweee,” Dizzy said, breaking the awkwardness at our table. “Okay,” I managed. Dizzy was in high spirits, bubbling over. He reminded me of my uncle Kenneth back home, who even resembled Dizzy physically, down to the expensive tweed sport jacket, cashmere sweater, brown camel-hair slacks, and English brogues. When we got to the Five Spot, the joint was packed to the rafters. The smoke-filled room was jumping, with Charlie Mingus looming wildly on stage, exhorting, cheering, and scolding his big band all at the same time while playing the hell out of his upright bass. His drummer was shouting back at him while beating the hell out of the skins. The integrated big band was playing their hearts out, intense and on edge, sending up a complex, wailing blues—one section’s tight melodies competing with another’s seeming chaos—that threatened to tear the roof off. Word was that Mingus was notorious for beating up members of his band when they made mistakes while playing his complicated arrangements, but the finished product was like nothing else, an exhilarating and eclectic mix of bebop, Dixieland, and swing. The band also played many Duke Ellington compositions. Mingus—who had played with the Ellington band for years—worshiped the Duke even more than Abdullah Ibrahim did.
Dizzy led me to a table where I met Max Roach, who seemed overjoyed to see me. He had heard from Dizzy that I was crazy about Clifford Brown, his late partner in the legendary quintet they had led together. Max Roach was an antiapartheid activist, and often organized pickets in front of the South African Mission to the United Nations. He was also a fervent civil rights advocate.
“I know Vusi Make from your country, and Maya Angelou, his wife,” Max told me. “They’re always at my house. When Miriam returns, my wife Abbey and I are gonna have a party for them. I’ll phone and ask her to bring you along. Vusi will be so happy to see you. He talks a lot about you. Welcome to New York. We’re gonna win in South Africa, and soon!”
Mingus was still playing when Dizzy checked his watch. He said we needed to get back to the Jazz Gallery for his next set. When we returned, we caught Monk’s last four songs, “Ruby, My Dear,” “Epistrophy,” “Crepuscule with Nellie,” and “’Round Midnight,” all compositions that Abdullah Ibrahim had insisted we play with the Jazz Epistles. It was a mind-blowing experience to hear Monk’s band with Charlie Rouse on tenor sax, Wilbur Ware on bass, and Ben Riley on drums. My favorite albums were coming alive right in front of my eyes. I could have been dreaming. When Dizzy was preparing to go back onstage, he called over his and Monk’s musicians and introduced them. They were all fascinated that I had just come from South Africa, and gave me a hearty welcome—Dizzy had been telling them about me.
Before he took the stage for his next set, Dizzy asked us where we were headed. “Back uptown,” Leslie replied.
“No, don’t do that,” Dizzy said. “Go down to the Half Note on Hudson and Spring Street. Go and catch John Coltrane. Hughie will enjoy that. Don’t go home now, oh no, ooowee.” We couldn’t say no.
We grabbed a cab and headed down to SoHo. While Leslie was paying the taxi driver, I slouched next to her, exhausted, but while the taxi’s engine idled I could hear faint rumblings coming from inside the club—Coltrane on his soprano sax, Reggie Workman on bass, McCoy Tyner on piano, and Elvin Jones on drums, pumping away on “My Favorite Things.” I leaped out of the cab, itching to get inside. Dizzy was right. The joint was jam-packed. Coltrane had recently formed a new group with whom he was stretching his music into ever greater complexity. But aside from that, his technique on the saxophone was devastating. He could play faster than anyone I’d heard before, and yet when he played slow ballads, his sound was the sweetest cry a saxophone could ever make. Every saxophone player of the time was overwhelmed by the man’s genius. After every one of his solos, you could almost hear the clanking sound of players around the world laying down their horns. Trane was really something else, literally, another thing altogether than anything I’d ever seen or heard up close.
During their break, Reggie Workman, who knew Leslie, brought Trane, McCoy, and Elvin over to our table to say hello. They were excited to meet a musician from South Africa. After sitting through their next set, Reggie wrote his phone number down on a drink coaster and insisted that I call him once I got settled. During the cab ride back to Miriam’s place, I was intoxicated by the evening’s experiences. Leslie was talking, but all I could do was stare at the skyscrapers on Sixth Avenue and occasionally glance in her direction. “My Favorite Things” kept ringing in my ears. I’ll never forget that moment. It was one o’clock in the morning, September 27. I had not had a good sleep since my last night in London, but that night I dreamed I was playing in Art Blakey’s band as a member of the Jazz Messengers. In all my years in South Africa, dreaming about what it would be like in America, none of those dreams came close to what I had actually experienced. In only four months since leaving South Africa, I had met Sammy Davis Jr., Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Max Roach. I’d seen John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Charles Mingus perform. I knew I had to work hard to get to the level of the great talents I had just been with, but I was determined to get there.
For all of its wonder, getting acclimated to life in New York was still challenging. Back in South Africa, election campaigns were reserved for the white world. Africans did not participate. When I arrived in New York, I had no idea how that world functioned. I had never had the opportunity to partake in this kind of freedom of expression. It was a bit overwhelming, arriving in America and finding the presidential campaigns between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon at fever pitch, Republicans and Democrats at each other’s throats, endless televised debates, round-the-clock flesh-pumping and baby-kissing, and a lot of character assassination and mudslinging, which all seemed to be in a day’s work in the business of politics. My ignorance was obvious to Jean, Jane, and Leslie, who tried to explain what all the madness was about.
As if this were not confusing enough, the annual United Nations General Assembly sessions were winding down. At center stage were Cuba’s Fidel Castro, who had just moved his large delegation to Harlem’s Hotel Theresa after the Waldorf-Astoria management allegedly accused his group of plucking live chickens and cooking them in their rooms.
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the UN lectern and declaring “We will bury you” managed to upstage Castro’s exodus to Harlem. The Congo’s Patrice Lumumba had come in for one day and returned home to the Congo’s murderous turmoil empty-handed. A young Yasser Arafat was also in town, to scream about Israel. I was fascinated by the proceedings. The world’s ideological one-upmanship was at its most intense at the United Nations, but basically everyone went back to their country without having achieved any significant victory. The world remained the same.
Meanwhile, the civil rights uprisings were reaching a boiling point in the American South. White people in the South resorted to all sorts of official and mob violence—against black men, women, and children, and their white allies—and it quickly became clear that the freedom we in South Africa assumed existed for people of African origin in America was a mirage. There wasn’t too much difference in how most white people felt about black
people throughout the West. I quickly realized that while I was in America, I needed to watch my black back and not think this place was that different from South Africa. The methods of racial terrorism might be applied differently here, but the disposition was the same. This was apartheid wearing a different hat.
Imam Elijah Muhammad’s Black Muslim movement was also making itself heard in the streets of New York and throughout black America. Malcolm X’s fiery speeches at highly disciplined rallies and interviews denounced King’s approach and promoted an eye-for-an-eye position. It was obvious that the white media was attempting to create a major division among American blacks by making it appear that Malcolm and Martin were archenemies. McCarthyism was still in the air, and the Communist scare was on the lips of every American, although very few if any could articulate what they were so terrified of. Anyone who stood for liberation from oppression was automatically regarded as a Communist. This was the America I found. This was also the America where Ray Charles’s “Wha’d I Say” was the number-one song, followed by Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Do the Twist,” the Impressions’ “It’s All Right,” and Sam Cooke’s “It’s Been a Long Time Comin’.”
I was getting behind on my schooling—Miriam was to help me figure out enrollment and fees when she returned from her tour—but I was thoroughly enjoying my time in the city. During the day, I took care of Bongi and tutored her in English. At night I prowled the jazz clubs with Jean or Leslie, or went to the movies or the Apollo Theater. Back then, the Apollo was still a mecca for black performers, and really opened me up to that world in a new way. I remember going there to see “The Gospel Train,” featuring Reverend James Cleveland, Reverend Cecil Franklin, Shirley Caesar, and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. We also checked out the James Brown Revue. I had never seen such an intense exhibition of high-level energy. The man made Sammy Davis Jr. appear lazy. On another day, we grooved to a wonderful rhythm and blues revue featuring Jackie Wilson, Ruth Brown, Etta James, Solomon Burke, Billy Wright, and many others. We reveled to the Ray Charles Revue and the Stax Memphis Revue, featuring Rufus Thomas, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, and Booker T and the MGs. I also had my first intense brush with salsa music when we caught the Latino Variety Revue with Machito’s Orchestra featuring his sister Xaviera; Celia Cruz with Pacheco’s band; La Lupe; Tito Puente; Tito Rodriguez; Willie Colon; Mongo Santamaria; and the Palmieri Brothers. The Apollo also had a jazz revue with the Horace Silver Quintet, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, the Slide Hampton Orchestra, Les McAnn’s trio, Gloria Lynne, Stanley Turrentine, and the Cannonball Quintet, featuring Nancy Wilson.
Still Grazing Page 17
