Hugh Masekela is the musical umbilical cord that connects America and Africa! His trumpet grooves are mindblowing. Before jazz had a name and “world music” was a concept, a young trumpet player emerged from another hemisphere and landed alongside some of the greatest icons in American music. Louis Armstrong sent him a trumpet. Harry Belafonte arranged for him to come to New York City to study music. Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis took him under their wings. That man, Hugh Masekela, born out of apartheid South Africa, has consistently toured worldwide and his genre-bending dynamism has led to his own icon status. If Nelson Mandela was the face of liberation for South Africa during the long years of apartheid, then Hugh Masekela was its sound.