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Welcome to our concert. | 0:00:04 | 0:00:06 | |
The sound of migration, of South Africa, | 0:00:06 | 0:00:09 | |
dedicated to the people of South Africa | 0:00:09 | 0:00:12 | |
who have been able to, after 300 years, collect together | 0:00:12 | 0:00:15 | |
such a great anthology of songs. | 0:00:15 | 0:00:18 | |
We're playing tonight with the London Symphony Orchestra, | 0:00:18 | 0:00:22 | |
a few South African singers, and the community choir of the LSO. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:26 | |
Welcome to South Africa. | 0:00:38 | 0:00:40 | |
APPLAUSE AND CHEERS | 0:04:37 | 0:04:39 | |
I grew up in the...in Africa's largest coal-mining town, Witbank. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:51 | |
Music absorbed me from when I was a little child. | 0:04:51 | 0:04:54 | |
When I was two years old I lived for the gramophone - | 0:04:54 | 0:04:58 | |
two, three years old, I used to wait, | 0:04:58 | 0:05:00 | |
who's going to get up first so they can hold it for me? | 0:05:00 | 0:05:03 | |
Cos I wasn't strong enough to hold it and wind it up. | 0:05:03 | 0:05:06 | |
By the time I was 13 I went to boarding school | 0:05:06 | 0:05:10 | |
and I saw a movie about a trumpet player called Young Man With A Horn. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:14 | |
I'd already met Father Harrison cos he was chaplain of my school. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:20 | |
He asked me one day, "What do you really want to do in life?" | 0:05:20 | 0:05:24 | |
I sort of was in trouble a lot with the authorities. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:27 | |
I said, "If I could get a trumpet, Father, just a trumpet, I wouldn't bother anybody any more." | 0:05:27 | 0:05:33 | |
And he got me a trumpet and a trumpet teacher. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:37 | |
I'd been trying for three years to get Harrison to get me a scholarship, | 0:05:37 | 0:05:41 | |
so I could come and study music here, and he finally got Johnny Dankworth, | 0:05:41 | 0:05:45 | |
who had been deported from South Africa for hanging out too much with the native people, | 0:05:45 | 0:05:51 | |
and they convinced the Guildhall to write me a letter of acceptance, | 0:05:51 | 0:05:55 | |
which was the only thing that I was lacking. | 0:05:55 | 0:05:58 | |
I got it shortly after the Sharpeville Massacre. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:02 | |
And I left immediately, because by then | 0:06:02 | 0:06:05 | |
I was also, like, very politically involved in the resistance movement | 0:06:05 | 0:06:10 | |
and underground work. | 0:06:10 | 0:06:12 | |
And...yeah, I left in a hurry. | 0:06:12 | 0:06:16 | |
APPLAUSE AND CHEERS | 0:12:19 | 0:12:20 | |
I had worked very hard so that by the time I got to New York, | 0:12:26 | 0:12:30 | |
I could already really play, you know? | 0:12:30 | 0:12:33 | |
I wanted really to, if nothing else, play in Blakey's Jazz Messengers. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:40 | |
But they refused to give me a gig. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:42 | |
Everybody said "Why don't you do your own thing? You come from Africa," | 0:12:44 | 0:12:47 | |
blah, blah, blah. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:48 | |
So finally I put together a trio and from there, I was gone. | 0:12:48 | 0:12:53 | |
We were really, like, into protest music and the anti-Vietnam War crusade was really on, | 0:12:55 | 0:13:01 | |
and the Civil Rights thing was on, so it was a great time for anarchy. | 0:13:01 | 0:13:05 | |
I was already very heavily involved in rubbishing the apartheid government, | 0:13:05 | 0:13:09 | |
and my friends were people like Belafonte and Miriam Makeba | 0:13:09 | 0:13:14 | |
and Dizzy and... It was all the anti-apartheid people. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:19 | |
And I was unknown, so Belafonte especially sat me down and said, | 0:13:19 | 0:13:23 | |
"Man, with your mouth you're going back there... | 0:13:23 | 0:13:26 | |
"They don't even know who you are, nobody knows who you are. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:29 | |
"They're going to be waiting for you at the airport | 0:13:29 | 0:13:33 | |
"and you're going straight to jail. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:35 | |
"They can do anything with you, | 0:13:35 | 0:13:37 | |
"nobody will know what happened to you. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:39 | |
"But if you stay here and you try and make a name for yourself, | 0:13:39 | 0:13:43 | |
"and you talk about your county, | 0:13:43 | 0:13:46 | |
"if you have a name, people will listen, | 0:13:46 | 0:13:48 | |
"and you'll be able to get the message across. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:51 | |
"You'll be of more use to your people than going back to them." | 0:13:51 | 0:13:54 | |
And...it made sense, so I stayed. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:57 | |
I stayed 26 years longer than I had planned. | 0:13:57 | 0:14:01 | |
MUSIC: "Stimela" | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
PERCUSSION IMITATES TRAIN | 0:14:05 | 0:14:09 | |
There's a train. | 0:14:12 | 0:14:14 | |
APPLAUSE AND CHEERS | 0:14:14 | 0:14:17 | |
It comes from Malawi, | 0:14:27 | 0:14:30 | |
Namibia. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:32 | |
There's a train that comes from Zambia and Zimbabwe. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:37 | |
There's a train that comes from Angola | 0:14:38 | 0:14:41 | |
and Mozambique. | 0:14:41 | 0:14:44 | |
From Lesotho, from Botswana, | 0:14:44 | 0:14:46 | |
from Swaziland. | 0:14:46 | 0:14:48 | |
From all the hinterlands of Southern and Central Africa. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:52 | |
This train carries young and old African men | 0:14:52 | 0:14:56 | |
who are conscripted to come and work on contract | 0:14:56 | 0:15:00 | |
in the gold and mineral mines of Johannesburg | 0:15:00 | 0:15:04 | |
and its surrounding provinces and metropoli. | 0:15:04 | 0:15:07 | |
16 hours or more a day, | 0:15:07 | 0:15:11 | |
for almost no pay. | 0:15:11 | 0:15:15 | |
Deep! | 0:15:15 | 0:15:17 | |
Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, | 0:15:19 | 0:15:22 | |
deep, deep down in the belly of the earth. | 0:15:22 | 0:15:26 | |
When they are digging and drilling | 0:15:30 | 0:15:33 | |
for that shiny, mighty evasive stone. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:35 | |
When they dish that mish-mash-mush food | 0:15:37 | 0:15:40 | |
into their iron plates with an iron shovel. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:45 | |
When they sit in their stinky, | 0:15:45 | 0:15:48 | |
filthy, funky, flea-ridden barracks and hostels, | 0:15:48 | 0:15:53 | |
and they think about their loved ones they may never see again | 0:15:53 | 0:15:57 | |
because they might already have been forcibly removed | 0:15:57 | 0:16:01 | |
from where they last left them. | 0:16:01 | 0:16:03 | |
Or wantonly murdered in the dead of night | 0:16:06 | 0:16:10 | |
by roving and marauding gangs of no particular origin. | 0:16:10 | 0:16:16 | |
So we are told. | 0:16:17 | 0:16:20 | |
They think about their lands and their herds | 0:16:20 | 0:16:23 | |
that were taken away from them with the gun and the cannon, | 0:16:23 | 0:16:27 | |
with the collaborator, the dog, the tear gas and the poison. | 0:16:27 | 0:16:34 | |
With the bomb and the Gatling. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
And when they hear that choo-choo train, | 0:16:38 | 0:16:41 | |
a-smoking and a-chugging and a-pumping and a-climbing | 0:16:41 | 0:16:46 | |
and a-struggling and a-pumping and a-smoking, | 0:16:46 | 0:16:49 | |
a-puffing and a-tooting and a-singing and a-crying | 0:16:49 | 0:16:52 | |
and a-moaning and a-wailing and a-screeching and a-screaming - | 0:16:52 | 0:16:56 | |
Aah! AAAAAAH! | 0:16:56 | 0:17:00 | |
They always curse. | 0:17:02 | 0:17:04 | |
And they curse the coal train. | 0:17:05 | 0:17:07 | |
The coal train that brought them to Johannesburg. | 0:17:07 | 0:17:11 | |
Stimela. | 0:17:11 | 0:17:13 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:18:58 | 0:19:02 | |
APPLAUSE AND CHEERS | 0:25:27 | 0:25:30 | |
I got ahead during the times of free love, | 0:25:35 | 0:25:38 | |
and I was a flower child, and my friends were people like David Crosby | 0:25:38 | 0:25:42 | |
and...the Jefferson Airplane people, | 0:25:42 | 0:25:48 | |
the Grateful Dead, | 0:25:48 | 0:25:50 | |
Big Brother and the Holding Company. | 0:25:50 | 0:25:54 | |
I played Monterey Park, you know. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:57 | |
It was everybody - | 0:25:57 | 0:25:59 | |
Jimi Hendrix was, you know, hanging out there. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:02 | |
And we were not wild, but we didn't sleep much. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:08 | |
The biggest record I ever had was Grazing In The Grass, | 0:26:11 | 0:26:14 | |
a typical South African dance tune. | 0:26:14 | 0:26:18 | |
And Russ Regan was the head of A&R at UNI. | 0:26:18 | 0:26:22 | |
He came to listen to, I think it was my fifth album, | 0:26:22 | 0:26:25 | |
he came and said, "I like that album, but you need another sound." | 0:26:25 | 0:26:28 | |
The saxophone player had been listening to these tapes that | 0:26:28 | 0:26:31 | |
I had just brought back from Zambia. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:33 | |
He said, "Why don't we try that song? Because it's simple." | 0:26:33 | 0:26:36 | |
It's got a simple melody, | 0:26:36 | 0:26:37 | |
It's got a bass line with four notes, boom boom, boom boom. | 0:26:37 | 0:26:41 | |
The drum just goes bam, ch-ch, bam, ch-ch. | 0:26:41 | 0:26:46 | |
And the piano goes... HE SINGS THE MELODY | 0:26:46 | 0:26:49 | |
And the guitar goes... HE SINGS THE MELODY | 0:26:49 | 0:26:53 | |
So we did it in half an hour, | 0:26:55 | 0:26:57 | |
and by the time Russ Regan came, it was mixed, | 0:26:57 | 0:27:03 | |
it just took us a short time. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:05 | |
Maybe we spent two hours on it. | 0:27:05 | 0:27:07 | |
And he came in and we played it for him and he said, "This is a smash." | 0:27:07 | 0:27:11 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:32:32 | 0:32:36 | |
This is an old, beautiful song from Brazil. | 0:33:03 | 0:33:06 | |
It's called The Joke Of Life. Brinca de Vivre. | 0:33:06 | 0:33:11 | |
It was written by Jon Lucien at a time when he thought | 0:33:11 | 0:33:16 | |
that injustice was the biggest joke of life. | 0:33:16 | 0:33:20 | |
Brinca de Vivre. | 0:33:22 | 0:33:26 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:39:15 | 0:39:17 | |
I spent 1980 to 1985 living in Botswana. | 0:39:18 | 0:39:22 | |
While here, we started the Botswana International School of Music, | 0:39:25 | 0:39:29 | |
and I'd signed with Jive Records and had a mobile studio, | 0:39:29 | 0:39:34 | |
in Gaborone. | 0:39:34 | 0:39:37 | |
So, I came back and I lived in England for five years, on and off. | 0:39:37 | 0:39:40 | |
On the stage, I toured with Paul Simon and I had Sarafina. | 0:39:40 | 0:39:45 | |
We were doing Sarafina, it was on Broadway, I think, for two years | 0:39:45 | 0:39:50 | |
when I got the call that Mandela was going to... | 0:39:50 | 0:39:53 | |
then Sisulu and Kathrada and all those people | 0:39:53 | 0:39:55 | |
were going to be let out of jail and then soon we'll be able to go home. | 0:39:55 | 0:39:58 | |
I didn't believe it, but when I... | 0:39:58 | 0:40:00 | |
When I finally spoke to Miriam Makeba and my sister Barbara, | 0:40:02 | 0:40:05 | |
at the time, was Mandela's chief of staff, | 0:40:05 | 0:40:08 | |
they put him on the phone and he said, "Hugh, you must come home. | 0:40:08 | 0:40:12 | |
"It's been long enough now." | 0:40:12 | 0:40:14 | |
And the next week I was on the plane. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:16 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:43:46 | 0:43:49 | |
I think the greatest thing for me of getting back to South Africa | 0:43:52 | 0:43:56 | |
was to be able to get back with the people, | 0:43:56 | 0:44:00 | |
especially the rural, ethnic, indigenous people. | 0:44:00 | 0:44:03 | |
And learn those things | 0:44:03 | 0:44:06 | |
about my heritage that I didn't know. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:11 | |
Now, I'm so obsessed with, like, all that kind of revival, | 0:44:11 | 0:44:15 | |
not only for myself, because, like, | 0:44:15 | 0:44:18 | |
colonialism and apartheid dealt so much damage, | 0:44:18 | 0:44:22 | |
not only in South Africa, | 0:44:22 | 0:44:25 | |
but all the neighbouring countries and, I guess, | 0:44:25 | 0:44:27 | |
to a great extent, the whole continent itself. | 0:44:27 | 0:44:30 | |
It's very important that, I think, the people of Africa | 0:44:30 | 0:44:34 | |
get back into their heritage, because I think there lies | 0:44:34 | 0:44:38 | |
the remedy for xenophobia. | 0:44:38 | 0:44:41 | |
I wasn't naive, because I'd lived in Botswana, | 0:44:42 | 0:44:44 | |
I knew what the economics of Africa was. | 0:44:44 | 0:44:48 | |
Indeed, I'd lived in the Congo, I'd lived in Nigeria, | 0:44:48 | 0:44:51 | |
I'd lived in Ghana, I'd lived in Guinea, | 0:44:51 | 0:44:54 | |
I'd lived in Liberia and Senegal. | 0:44:54 | 0:44:56 | |
So I knew the terrain. | 0:44:56 | 0:44:58 | |
So when I went back it was, of course, personally, | 0:44:58 | 0:45:01 | |
to be able to, like, reimmerse myself | 0:45:01 | 0:45:05 | |
in the culture and the society, | 0:45:05 | 0:45:08 | |
but mostly to see what I could bring, | 0:45:08 | 0:45:11 | |
because I had sourced so much from Africa | 0:45:11 | 0:45:16 | |
and I need to pay it back. | 0:45:16 | 0:45:17 | |
And the only way to pay it back, I think, is by making the people see | 0:45:17 | 0:45:22 | |
how wonderful they are and how excellent they are | 0:45:22 | 0:45:25 | |
and get them to enjoy their heritage again. | 0:45:25 | 0:45:29 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:49:56 | 0:49:57 | |
The most unfair judgement of South Africa is the fact that | 0:49:59 | 0:50:03 | |
people expect us to be that which they thought we were going to be - | 0:50:03 | 0:50:07 | |
The Miracle Nation. | 0:50:07 | 0:50:09 | |
But we come from a very, very untidy | 0:50:09 | 0:50:12 | |
and raggedy and very violent past. | 0:50:12 | 0:50:16 | |
And also...a very corrupt one. | 0:50:17 | 0:50:21 | |
And we've only been free 15 years. | 0:50:21 | 0:50:25 | |
I say to people - listen, England has been enjoying freedom | 0:50:25 | 0:50:30 | |
maybe for over, like, ten centuries. | 0:50:30 | 0:50:34 | |
France, you know, maybe just as long, | 0:50:34 | 0:50:38 | |
if not longer, and, like, Germany and all those places. | 0:50:38 | 0:50:41 | |
And America has been free, maybe, almost 300 years. | 0:50:41 | 0:50:46 | |
But they all have problems. | 0:50:46 | 0:50:48 | |
They still have problems, | 0:50:48 | 0:50:49 | |
so maybe if you come back to me 800 years from now, | 0:50:49 | 0:50:53 | |
I'll be able to say, "Well, we're making some headway." | 0:50:53 | 0:50:56 | |
MUSIC: South African National Anthem - "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" | 0:50:56 | 0:51:00 | |
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING | 0:57:11 | 0:57:15 |