Age might show in this singer, songwriter and trumpet player’s face, but his spirit has not been changed. Deep down, he is still the activist that he was back in the 1960s, when he left apartheid-era South Africa to study at the Royal Academy of Music. In more than forty years in the business, he performed with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Paul Simon and Her Albert, and in the meantime he was also one of the main voices that denounced the absurdity of the racist laws of his native land while also being instrumental in bringing the traditional sounds of South African music to a mainstream jazz audience. On his most recent album, “Live At The Market Theater” (Times Square), he revisits many of these songs, while also playing newer material, which celebrates the resilience of his people throughout years of hardship. Blending Afro, Western, Caribbean and Latin influences into his sound, he comes up with a positive-sounding album that is very welcome to the ear. In one of its best moments, he sings of “Mandela,” a tune written at the time when the former South African president was still in jail – he sings about his desire to see Nelson Mandela roam the streets as a free man. Zulu language comes into tracks such as “Oistrict Six,” a rock-steady song in which singer Corlea lends her soulful vocals, which seamlessly blends with Masekela’s flugelhorn.

By Ernest Barteldes