Siparia to Soweto

Hugh Masekela first heard the Trinidadian steel pan orchestra the Siparia Deltones when they were opening act at the inaugural San Fernando Jazz Festival in 2005. Years before, when living in exile in London, the South African trumpeter had come across calypso and other Caribbean styles imported by the Windrush immigrants and had loved the vernacular exuberance. Yet at the time the idea of bridging the musical worlds of Africa and the Caribbean does not seem to have occurred – no doubt he already had too many other projects on the go.

However, when he heard the Siparia Deltones it suddenly seemed very obvious: Trinidad’s African heritage expresses itself through the steel pan as potently as jazz and blues were the legacy of the slave plantations of America’s Deep South.

The idea fermented for several years until the Deltones’ band leader Akinola Sennon and musical arranger Carlton ‘Zanda’ Alexander met Masekela again in 2012 in St Lucia, where he was headlining the island’s annual jazz festival.

They invited him to their home town of Siparia on Trinidad’s southern coast and in May 2013 he spent six weeks there recording with the Deltones. After post-production work in South Africa, the release of the record was announced by Trinidad & Tobago’s Ministry of Arts and Multiculturalism for May 2014 with a gala ceremony in Port of Spain followed by a celebratory concert in Siparia.

For various reasons, not least Masekela’s battle with the cancer that would end his life in 2018, the project mothballed. Its belated release a decade after it was recorded now makes Siparia to Soweto the second posthumous Masekela, following 2020’s Rejoice! with Tony Allen.

The sound of the steel pans fills every track but it’s predominantly Masekela’s album as he sings and blows his burnished trumpet solos over the pulsating Afro-Caribbean rhythms. Soca legend Machel Montano sings on the opening track ‘The Meeting Place’ and several of the songs are Trinidadian standards by the likes of Lord Kitchener and Mighty Shadow – but it is ‘Bra’ Hugh who ties it all together with a South African township vibe, revisiting his 1980s hit version of Fela Kuti’s ‘Lady’ in swinging style and reprising his glorious trumpet solo from ‘Grazing in the Grass’ almost note-for-note on ‘Dis Soca is for You’.

The album ends with a nine-minute live version of the ‘The Meeting Place’ by the Deltones without Masekela, a symphonic storm of clattering percussion and ringing pans played with an energy that is thrilling enough on record and must have been overwhelming in person.