Quotes from Hugh Masekela

In some townships, political parties are run by thugs financed from Cape Town. If we don't have support of the police, we can not have the ability to organize and to gain even a slight semblance of power.

I couldn't get away from the gramophone. It was the only thing that I ever really liked, and I was singing along by the time I was five years old - to the Modernaires and Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.

I always make the joke that I go home, to one of my homes, to go and do laundry so I can go on the road again.

Whatever you go into, you have to go in there to be the best. There's no formulas. It's all about passion and honesty and hard work. It might look glamorous, but it takes a lot of hard work. The blessing with the arts is that you can do it forever.

Watching a Kirk Douglas movie, 'Young Man With A Horn,' made me want to be a trumpet player.

I'm travelling more than ever. I don't have the answer as to why, but the demand seems to have grown as I've got older.

Once in a while, I treat myself to a cheesecake or carrot cake.

Twenty years ago, I was part of a movement of millions of people who were going after freedom. But today, they look and they say, 'What are the advantages of freedom?' So far, it's the vote and maybe, in certain places, lack of police harassment. You can live anywhere you want and do anything you want - if you have the means.

When I left South Africa there were 10 million people - when I came back there were more than 40 million. I had to learn how to get to the highways because when I left where there were no highways.

When I left South Africa in 1960 I was 20 years old. I wanted to try to get an education, and music education was not available for me in South Africa.

I think the most difficult thing that has had to happen in South Africa for the previously disadvantaged communities is they had to reconcile that the oppressor has been enriched and the establishment is now making five or 10 times more profit than they were during the time the economic embargo was on them.

I'm very interested in heritage restoration, and I'm working with a group of people to create a number of academies and performance spaces to encourage native arts and crafts and to explore African history.

I'm not a Christian. My participation in music is so full blast, 24 hours a day. And that's my religion. I think I'm as spiritual as the pope, because I spend as much time in my spirituality as he does.

For me to want to play the trumpet was a very, very odd thing for my clan as a whole. One of my uncles was a high school principal, and he referred to my trumpet as a bugle, which really hurt me.

I just came from South Africa, a place that had been in a perpetual uprising since 1653, so the uprising had become a way of life in our culture and we grew up with rallies and strikes and marches and boycotts.

I've always stood on one fact - that all over the world, there are only two things, the Establishment and the poor people. The poor people are a massive majority and across the world they are exploited in different kinds of ways. The Establishment depends on exploiting raw materials and the poor.

I want to see Nelson walking down the streets of South Africa; I want to see him walking hand-in-hand with Winnie Mandela.

I think it is incumbent on all human beings to oppose injustice in every form.

I have a major respect for nature. I'm an environmentalist.

If I don't make heritage visible and the strength of mother tongue important for my grandchildren, it scares me that they might say in 20 years from now, 'Well, it is rumoured that we used to be Africans long ago.' And in many urban areas, it's already happening.

The Afro-American experience is the only real culture that America has. Basically, every American tries to walk, talk, dress and behave like African Americans.