That Easter, my student friends returned to New York for their spring break. They brought several new arrivals from the Tanzania camps. The late-night partying, dancing, and loud music resumed—my apartment was once again transformed into a township commune, with most everyone sleeping on the floor and couches. I kept my bedroom private because Pearl Reynolds was a regular overnight visitor. Of course, the FBI car, which had gone away after the Christmas holidays, returned and parked in front of 310 West 87th street again.
I was finding it difficult to feed all of them and satisfy their booze appetites. I appealed to Miriam for help, and as usual her generosity was abundant. The students warned that many more were on their way to America. This was obviously going to be a heavy load for both Miriam and me. They told us of the difficult conditions in the refugee camps, where many of the young people lacked adequate clothing, medicine, food, and other commodities, and were contracting all kinds of diseases. This information raised Miriam’s concern. She suggested that we form a nonprofit student organization that would raise funds to help these young people with their needs in America and in the camps. She spoke to Harry about the idea, and he promised to bring in friends like Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll, and Marlon Brando to become patrons and trustees of the South African Student Association (SASA). At the launch of SASA, the students performed freedom and resistance and liberation songs that were being sung at rallies and in the refugee camps. Belafonte was deeply moved, and proposed that he and Miriam, along with the students, record an album from this repertoire.
Later that spring, Jonas Gwangwa arrived from London to begin attending the Manhattan School of Music. South African saxophonist Morris Goldberg, who had been playing on a cruise ship between London and New York, had also been accepted by the school. Jonas and Morris became my roommates. As if that weren’t bad enough, Sonny Pillay arrived. He stayed with us for two months until he found a place of his own.
My apartment quickly became a meeting place for many of my musician friends who were attending the Manhattan School of Music. I rented an upright piano and transformed the place into a music lab with regular weekend jam sessions, where we developed a wide repertoire of bebop classics and American standards. We composed new songs and worked on arrangements for Sonny’s nightclub engagements. Instead of complaining about the chaos, Mrs. Marzani totally embraced the constant bustle and hubbub taking place below her apartment. By now even the FBI agents were becoming fascinated with the human traffic of musicians, fine women, students, and Africans in traditional robes. One of them asked me one day, “Tell me, what’s really going on in there?” I said, “Good times, my man, good times, yeah!” I told them they could drop in anytime. “Unfortunately,” one of them said, “our job does not allow that.” I felt sorry for the FBI.
One day Miriam asked me to go to Los Angeles so I could meet with Marlon Brando and explain the idea of the South African Student Association to him. He was anxious to get more information about the organization. She felt I, as the newly elected president, could best articulate the group’s mission. I stayed at the Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset Boulevard, where I met with Brando. I was struck by his knowledge of what was happening in South Africa. He shocked me when he asked about the possibility of breaking Robert Sobukwe, the president of the South African Pan-African Congress, out of Robben Island prison. He was serious. He said he had the means and the contacts to make it happen. I was skeptical—Brando’s idea sounded like a Hollywood adventure-film scenario.
Following the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, Sobukwe was arrested and sentenced to three years for incitement, and imprisoned on Robben Island. The apartheid government, fearing his fiery oratory would influence an already incendiary African community, instituted the notorious Sobukwe Clause, which allowed him to be kept on Robben Island without being charged with a crime. He was kept in isolation from the other political prisoners. Nine guards watched his movements, but they were never allowed to speak to him, so he lived in solitary confinement for six years without ever hearing the sound of a human voice. In 1969 he was released and then banished to Kimberley, a mining town where he had never lived. Before his incarceration, Sobukwe was a lecturer in African Studies at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. During his imprisonment he obtained a degree in economics from the University of London and started his law studies via correspondence. He finished law school in Kimberley, and in 1975 he started his own law practice. Although he was offered several teaching posts at American universities, the government prevented him from traveling overseas. The years of isolation must have caused him severe mental anguish. Sobukwe, who had been under house arrest for twelve hours a day, died in Kimberley at age fifty-four, on February 27, 1978.
I gave Miriam a full report of my meeting with Brando, and, moved by his concern, she resolved to consult with the Pan-African Congress leadership on his plan during one of her upcoming trips to Africa. In 1964, A. B. Ngcobo, the PAC’s chief representative and a close friend of Robert Sobukwe, came to New York and had dinner with Miriam and me. We told him about Brando’s interest, and he was very keen to meet the actor. Miriam took Ngcobo to Los Angeles, where she introduced him to Brando, who later gave him $20,000 as seed money to plan for Sobukwe’s rescue. No one ever heard from Ngcobo again, and Brando lost interest and confidence in our cause.
Miriam had contributed a hefty amount of seed money toward the formation of SASA. Our activities had not gone unnoticed by some high-ranking U.S. State Department officials. On July 16, 1963, she addressed the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid. The press reported Miriam’s remarks, and the South African government immediately banned her albums. Miriam had also grown close to Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Jomo Kenyatta, Tom Mboya, Muammar Qadaffi, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Edwardo Mondlane, Amilcar Cabral, and Fidel Castro, to name a few. She’d sacrificed her highly lucrative career at the pinnacle of her international successes to highlight the plight of her people. But her actions prejudiced the entire establishment of the Western countries against her.
In February 1963, I opened Playboy and saw one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. She wasn’t the centerfold, but a dark-complexioned, sculptured black panther, part of an eight-page “Chicks of Cleopatra” pictorial that was part of the publicity for Elizabeth Taylor’s upcoming movie. I kept that Playboy opened to her page on my living room table. I couldn’t stop looking at her—if only I could find her.
One evening, Bruce Langhorne and his wife, Georgia, were at my apartment for dinner when Georgia began thumbing through my Playboy magazine. Seconds later she let out a scream. “Hey, Bruce, check this out. This is Barbara Alston standing at attention in slave threads at the feet of Elizabeth Taylor’s royal throne! Can you believe this shit?” I moved closer to see what the hysteria was about, only to find out that they were laughing about the girl I wanted to meet. I asked, “You guys know this woman? I want to meet this girl.” It turns out they’d known Barbara for years. Georgia had worked with her on a number of dance projects.
Bruce promised he’d try to locate my panther. Two weeks later he called and told me she was working as a dancer in a tropical revue at the African Room nightclub on 44th Street, where she was part of a show headed by Johnny Barracuda, a young calypsonian from Trinidad. She was even more beautiful in person than in Playboy. After the performance she came over to our table, where we were introduced. I invited Barbara, her dance colleagues, Johnny, and their conga player, a tall, genie-like giant named Big Black, over to my apartment for drinks. At the house, Johnny seemed insecure every time I spoke to Barbara, and Big Black told me they were an item, even though Johnny was living with another woman. This news was encouraging.
A few days later I was on my way to work at Clara Music when I bumped into Barbara on 57th Street. She was coming from a dance class. I asked her to dinner. She accepted and gave me her telephone number. The next evening, Barbara and I had dinner at Maharajah, an Indian restaurant on 92nd Street
, after which we went to the Village Vanguard to see Miles Davis. She seemed very impressed that I knew Miles when I introduced them. Afterwards, we took a taxi to Harlem where Barbara was living with her mother. She gave me a passionate good-night kiss, the beginning of an affair that lasted years, over many breakups and reconciliations, and of a friendship that still endures.
At this time I was still dating Pearl Reynolds, and she began to sense a change in me. She soon found out about Barbara Alston, and although Barbara’s name never came up, one morning Pearl left my apartment in tears. It was the end of our love affair.
Sonny and Morris had found their own places to live, leaving Jonas and me as roommates. By now Jonas had pretty much established his own lifestyle and had his own circle of friends. My Lincoln University friends returned for Easter vacation. One day Big Black was telling us about this place in New Jersey where we could buy tripe, intestines, and live goats. The guys became excited about the prospect of some genuine, home-style cuisine—goat meat, cornmeal pap, onion-and-tomato gravy. We just had to get a goat. I pointed out that there was no way we could slaughter a goat in the backyard because it was illegal. “We’ll slaughter it in the bathtub,” one of my friends said. Late one night, three of them returned from New Jersey with a billy goat dressed in a jacket, a cap and a scarf fastened tightly around its mouth to muffle the animal’s moans. They had sat with the goat disguised as a passenger in the backseat between two of them so they wouldn’t have any problems with the attendant at the George Washington Bridge tollbooth. Thank God the FBI car was not there when they returned to my apartment. We had the music up loud when the goat was slaughtered in the bathtub, but during the process Mrs. Marzani called from upstairs to find out what all the commotion was about. It was unusual for her to call, because she had never complained about noise coming from my apartment, but she apparently seemed to sense that something weird was going on. She never found out. We feasted on that goat for almost two weeks.
One evening Barbara decided to spend the night with me. Jonas was away, and I looked forward to being alone with her at 310. I met her after her dance class, and we had an early dinner and caught an early Miles Davis set at the Village Vanguard. On the way home we picked up some groceries and a bottle of Courvoisier. It was an evening both of us had been looking forward to for a long while. Shortly before midnight, when we were hurriedly walking down 87th Street toward my place, I noticed at least a dozen guys waiting at the entrance to 310. One screamed, “Hey, Hugh, hurry up, man, it’s cold out here.” Barbara said, “Who the fuck are those people?” I explained that they were my homeboys from Lincoln University, and that my place was the only one they knew to stay in New York.
Even though they were polite and affectionate when they introduced themselves, Barbara was livid. “Hughie, are you trying to tell me that these people are going to sleep in your apartment? Where are you going to put all of them?” she whispered. Once inside, we resumed the debate in my bedroom. Barbara continued, “Hughie, I love you very much, and I like your friends, but I ain’t sleeping in this house with all these niggers. This was supposed to be our first night together. I am not going to do it with all these people in the house. How am I gonna go to the bathroom if I wanna take a leak with all these Negroes looking up all over my ass? I’m sorry, Hughie, you’re just gonna have to take me home.”
“Okay, Barbara, I understand,” I said. “Don’t worry, baby, I’ve got a solution.” I called the Paris Hotel on West End Avenue, where Barbara and I spent two undisturbed, blissful days.
My final school year was halfway gone and I still had not begun to understand what psychology was all about. My passion for study began to disappear. My club-hopping, pot-smoking, cognac-guzzling, and dalliances with countless women were also beginning to take a toll on my schoolwork. The pain of being unable to return home was becoming unbearable. A certain recklessness was creeping into my lifestyle.
My parents’ recent divorce triggered a new restlessness in me. I began to develop an aching desire to return to South Africa, teach music, and help my mother cope with her new responsibilities of having to care for my sisters on her own while my father prepared to take a new wife. The periodic visits from people back home and the recordings they brought us by outstanding new groups such as the Dark City Sisters, Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens, and veterans like Zakes Nkosi and Ntemi Piliso, made me more homesick than ever; I was aching for the township life and decided that I would return to South Africa. I felt very strongly that I had learned everything in America that I needed to know, and it was time to share my experiences back home. I had made enough money to kick-start a new life in South Africa. When I told Harry Belafonte about my plans, he sat me down and said, “Hughie, this is not a good time for you to go back home. Nelson Mandela and all of his colleagues are sentenced to death. With your mouth, you have exactly the kind of temperament that will place you in direct confrontation with the apartheid authorities. If something bad happened to you, there would be nothing much we could do to help you. There won’t be any international outcry to intervene on your behalf. On the other hand, if you remain here and continue to make a name for yourself, you will eventually have access to the media so that when you talk about your country’s problems, people all over the world will listen.” I appreciated Harry’s concern for my well-being, but I had made up my mind to go home.
Miriam Makeba, after having made her United Nations General Assembly speech against apartheid earlier that year, was deeply concerned about my plans to return to South Africa.
Jonas planned to go as far as London with me, where he would stay and visit friends and then return to New York in the fall. We explained our London plans to Mrs. Marzani, who allowed us to leave the apartment in care of Willie Kgositsile and Joe Louw. In London, Myrtle and Monty Berman, who had left South Africa on exit permits, warned me that if I returned to South Africa, I would be arrested immediately. Myrtle said, “Are you crazy? Spengler will be waiting for you with open arms.”
My mother sent me a letter warning me not to set foot on South African soil. She reminded me of a previous letter in which she’d mentioned that the Special Branch Police had come to our house looking for me after I left the country. They were not pleased that I had slipped through their fingers.
My sister Barbara had also taken an exit permit from South Africa. She had married an American who was her professor at Roma University in Lesotho. He went to teach at Legon University in Ghana, where Barbara enrolled to study. Shortly after their arrival in Ghana, they broke up. My sister had just come to London to enroll at the university. It was truly a pleasant surprise, because I hadn’t seen her in more than four years. She let me know I was completely insane for wanting to return to South Africa. All of this made me reconsider my decision to go home.
By coincidence, a telegram arrived from Miriam. While on tour in Los Angeles, she had become ill after complaining of a lack of energy. She was hospitalized there and had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. She didn’t know if she was going to survive or, if she did, how long it was going to take for her to recuperate. She asked me to return to New York and help look after Bongi. I was in a state of confusion. I had now been thinking about staying in London where I was getting many lucrative offers. But Miriam was in trouble. I sent a telegram to Mrs. Whitford requesting reinstatement to school and my need for a student reentry visa. When I got back to New York, Miriam had been released from Hollywood Community Hospital and had been given a clean bill of health. She was back in New York, and thrilled that I had returned.
I found 310 in shambles. Willie, Joe, and the Lincoln University gang had trashed the place and left an eight-hundred-dollar telephone bill. Barbara Alston and I spent two days shampooing the carpets and cleaning. I noticed that the unmarked FBI car had returned to its usual spot. For better or worse, I realized, America was home.
In January 1964, Miriam and I unexpectedly found ourselves rekindling our romance. I was now playing one-nighters around
New York on a fairly regular basis with pianist Larry Willis, bassist Hal Dodson, and drummer Henry Jenkins. Our quartet was beginning to attract major critical notice. Because I sang to the musicians when teaching them South African songs, Miriam and Larry persuaded me to add my singing to our live act. Larry threatened to refuse to play if I didn’t sing. At first I was reluctant because I felt my voice was not good enough, but I tried it. The audiences seemed to enjoy my singing, especially on tunes I had learned from Bongi and Miriam.
The first song I wrote for this group was “U-Dwi,” my mother’s nickname. It was an uptempo mbhaqanga shuffle, which had a heavy bebop and merengue groove, an ideal vehicle for Larry and me to show off our dexterity on our instruments when we were soloing. Miriam’s mother’s “Dzinorabiro” (I’m Possessed by the Spirits of My Ancestors) and “Abangoma” (The Traditional Healers Are Rejoicing) were up tempo songs. Here, Larry and I did traditional call-and-response vocals before jazzing up our solos. “Bajabula Bonke” (They All Rejoiced at My Illness), another song from Miriam’s mother, was a slow lament in which Larry harmonized my vocals. “U’ Nhlanhla,” a composition by Bongi about her cousin back home, was a mid-tempo shuffle. “Ntyilo Ntyilo” (The Bird Song) was a classic South African love ballad.
Then we would break into a furious double tempo with Henry and Hal playing feverishly against Larry’s vamping and my solo, reminiscent of Coltrane’s quartet. “Mixolydia” was a tribute to Miles and Coltrane, a cross between the former’s “All Blues,” and ’Trane’s “Favorite Things.” Larry’s “Con Mucho Carino” was a fast-paced Juajuanco-jazz kind of salsa. I also wrote “Child of the Earth,” an ethnic-sounding chant about a beautiful young rural woman walking with a tempting, rhythmic gait on her way to fetch water from the village stream. All of our songs were a hybrid of traditional and ethnic chants, township dance, and Caribbean, calypso-like grooves mixed with jazz and Brazilian sambas. It was a potpourri of the music of the African diaspora. All kinds of jazz critics and music experts have tried to categorize it, but have been unable to pin it down. I haven’t either. One thing is for sure, it has gotten me where I am today. Village Gate owner Art D’Lugoff was so knocked out by the group that he hired us to open every time female artists like Nina Simone, Gloria Lynne, Buffy St. Marie, or Carmen McRae headlined.
Still Grazing Page 22
