# CD review: Tony Allen, Hugh Masekela – Rejoice 2020: Video, CD cover

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2020/07/15/cd-review-tony-allen-hugh-masekela-rejoice-2020-video-cd-cover/
- Published: 2020-07-15T00:03:50+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Rejoice combines the talents of two legendary African musicians, Nigerian drummer
Tony Allen (co-founder of Afrobeat and longtime member of alt-rock supergroup The
Good The Bad & The Queen) with the late trumpeter, South Africa’s Hugh Masakela,
who passed in 2018. **

This is the first posthumous release since his passing. The two had talked for decades
about making an album together, when in 2010 they found time in between touring 
schedules to begin this project. Producer Nick Gold, acclaimed for so many world
music productions including The Buena Vista Social Club, recorded the proceedings.
The unfinished sessions lay dormant in the archives until Masakela’s passing. With
stern resolve and the help of Masakela’s estate, Gold and Allen unearthed the original
tapes and finished the recording in the summer of 2019 at the same London studio
where the original took place.

Allen and Masakela are accompanied on this recording by a new generation of players
including bassist Tom Herbert (Acoustic Ladyland/The Invisible), keyboardist Joe
Armon-Jones (Ezra Collective), bassist Mutale Chashi (Kokoroko) and UK saxophonist
Steve Williamson. In addition to playing superbly, mostly on flugelhorn, Masakela
was inspired to overdub some spontaneous vocals on a trio of selections – either
in colloquial Zula, as on the loosely rendered opening “Robbers, Thugs and Muggers”
with the chant of “O Galanjani” (township slang for a collection of rogues) or in
the appropriately jazz-meets-Afrobeat-hued tribute to Fela Kute “Never (Lagos Never
Gonna Be The Same),” in English.

”We’ve Landed” has been released as a single and finds Allen providing hushed but
celebratory semi-spoken commentary. “The song is dedicated to today’s youth,” says
Allen. “The lyric addresses people at seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old, who
slowly becoming more mature, finding out who they are and realizing that it’s their
generation’s turn to wake up!” the beginning of the piece also depicts Masakela’s
pure, beautiful tone and the album demonstrates that Masakela has a real knack for
call and response dialogue as well as a gift for navigating the many changes of 
jazz. Some may only be familiar with him through his pop radio hit, “Grazing in 
the Grass” but his playing is every bit as versatile as almost any trumpeter one
could name. The South African chanting, will, of course, be familiar to almost anyone
as popularized by Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

Allen, whose creative drumming is brilliant throughout (especially spotlighted in“
Jabulani (Rejoice, Here Comes Tony). He says this when describing the album, “as
kind of South African-Nigerian swing-jazz-stew.” Some prime examples of this description
are the parallel horn ensemble passages and loping drums in “Agbada Bougou,” the
swinging brass conversations and the propulsive percussion of “Coconut Jam” or the
marvelous snare drum skittering in “Obama Shuffle Strut Blues.” Another not-to-be-
missed track is “Slow Bones” which spotlights Williamson’s sax work both soloing
and in riveting dialogue with Masakela.

1 Robbers Thugs & Muggers (O’Galajani)
 2 Agbada Bougou 3 Coconut Jam 4 Never (Lagos
Never Gonna Be The Same) 5 Slow Bones 6 Jabulani (Rejoice, Here Comes Tony) 7 Obama
Shuffle Strut Blues 8 We’ve Landed

![Tony Allen / Hugh Masekela: Rejoice Album Review | Pitchfork](https://i0.wp.com/
media.pitchfork.com/photos/5e70f24d5d64430008c92fad/1%3A1/w_600/Rejoice_Allen%20%
26%20Masekela.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)

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