Bra Hugh has died
Correspondent | Tuesday January 23, 2018 10:00
Masekela's family sent a statement confirming the news to the media. 'After a protracted and courageous battle with prostate cancer, he passed peacefully in Johannesburg, South Africa surrounded by his family,' read the statement.
The statement explained that the jazz veteran underwent eye surgery in March 2016 after the cancer spread, and had to go into theatre again in September 2016 as another tumour was discovered.
In October, he cancelled a scheduled performance at the Hugh Masekela Heritage Festival in Rockville, Soweto to dedicate himself to battling the disease and called on all men to go for regular cancer check-ups.
Masekela was born in KwaGuqa township in Witbank and began singing and playing the piano as a child.
After seeing the film Young Man with a Horn when he was 14, Masekela began playing the trumpet.
His first trumpet was given to him by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, an anti-apartheid chaplain at St. Peter's Secondary School.
He soon mastered the instrument and by 1956 joined Alfred Herbet's African Jazz Revue.
Bra Hugh's music was inspired by the turmoil that South Africa went through during apartheid and he said it was used as a weapon to spread political change.
Additional reporting by TimesLive and eNCA