To this day, I consume music with exactly the same disposition I had toward it when I was a child.
Hugh Masekela -- one of the most famous South African jazz musicians of all time, master of all forms of trumpet, including cornet and flugelhorn -- was born in the mining town of Witbank, South Africa, in 1939, a town separated by a creek with all the whites (Boers and the English) on one side and everyone else on the other, where while the windows were painted black in anticipation of Nazi attack, yet sympathy amongst the Boers was nonetheless to the fascists.
Music was still yet everywhere, and when there was a wedding, a white flag would be lifted at the home of the betrothed as a parade of relatives and family sang wedding songs every evening. There were gramophones, and Hugh started singing along with them at an early age. Hugh had piano lessons in grade school, and at the age of 14, sneaking out of school with a friend, he saw the movie Young Man with a Horn about the jazz legend Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke who died at the age of 28. Hugh was so astonished he "left the theater not caring if I got caught or what punishment it would bring" and decided at that moment to become a trumpet player.
He received a used trumpet and was able (via the efforts of the Anglican Father Trevor Huddleston at his school, who was anti-apartheid) to get lessons. Huddleston was later deported to England (protesting the 1953 Bantu Education Act, which established amongst other things segregated education); on the way there he visited a friend in the United States and saw the legendary Louis Armstrong. He got to speak to Armstrong and told him about Hugh and his talents; Armstrong arranged to have one of his trumpets sent to the teenager.
Hugh helped establish the Jazz Epistles band in 1959; perhaps their most noteworthy performances were with the "All African Jazz Opera" King Kong, about the boxer Ezekiel Dlamini. One of the songs ("Ityala Lalamadoda" or "Sad Times, Bad Times") was a reference to the infamous South African Treason Trial in Pretoria (which had started in 1956 and still was ongoing when the musical played) with 156 defendants, including Nelson Mandela. Mandela himself attended the first night -- along with his wife, activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela -- and thanked the composer Todd Matshikiza for the message of support. (With the trial, all defendants were acquitted in 1961, but Mandela was arrested again in 1962 and would not be released from prison until 1990.)
Soon after, Hugh made arrangements -- with the help of friends of Father Huddleston -- to start school at London's Guildhall School of Music in London. However, in March of 1960 the Sharpeville Massacre occurred (police fired at demonstrators) and public gatherings were forbidden; this meant Hugh could no longer tour so he left to London, and then a year after went to the Manhattan School of Music on scholarship.
In 1961 Hugh met Harry Belafonte, who helped mentor the young musician, and he was invited to play trumpet on a record by Miriam Makeba (Harry was the producer). Hugh played on three of the songs and the record was a hit, lending Hugh instant local fame, but not yet success. (Hugh and Miriam would be married from between 1963 and 1968; during this time Hugh was producer on An Evening with Makeba and Belafonte which won a Grammy, the first ever awarded to an African.)
Hugh's first solo album (Trumpet Africaine, 1963) wasn't as much a success, but Harry Belafonte thought Hugh's playing would be stronger with more African influence, and he consequently went on a tour of various countries, but sadly, not his home country. While Hugh desired to return home, he was warned by his parents and his sister to stay away because he would likely be arrested, and Harry Belafonte convinced him that he would be more effective using his music to bring attention to apartheid to the world stage.
His efforts eventually led to world fame when recording the album The Promise Of A Future for Uni he was informed he was 3 minutes short of a promised 30 minutes. The result was the instrumental single Grazing in the Grass (1968), recorded in Hollywood, which made number 1 on Billboard Hot 100 (replacing This Guy's In Love With You by Herb Alpert, other trumpet player) and used prominent cowbell (inspired by a song Hugh had heard in Zambia). (You can listen to the song here, all two minutes and 37 seconds worth.)
His next notable song was from his 1974 album I Am Not Afraid with Stimela (The Coal Train) which blended musical traditions as he created the sound of both a train and a miner's drill. It harkens back to the exploitation of miners he witnessed back in Witbank:
This train carries young and old, African men
Who are conscripted to come and work on contract
In the golden mineral mines of Johannesburg
And its surrounding metropolis, sixteen hours or more a day
For almost no pay.
While he couldn't reach South Africa, he still went as close as he could, setting up Jive Records in Botswana just over the border with South Africa and record mbaqanga (jazz with South African vocal styling).
His most direct message about apartheid came in 1984 with Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela) from 1984, a song banned in South Africa but used to rally the world behind the anti-apartheid cause. Also banned -- and done in collaboration Miriam Makeba -- was Soweto Blues, about the Soweto uprising of 1976, where demonstrations and protests led to somewhere between 200 and 700 dead:
The children got a letter from the master
It said no more Xhosa, Sotho, no more Zulu
Refusing to comply they sent an answer
That's when the policemen came to the rescue
Well children were flying, bullets, dying
Oh the mothers screaming and crying
The ban was finally lifted in 1990, the same year Mandela was released. Hugh Masekela finally was able to come home that September. Hugh Masekela's sister Barbara became Mandela's chief of staff. There in South Africa he remained, still performing music, building an extensive discography (15 albums after 1990, and a 16th posthumously last year) working with social programs (like one providing meals for students, and one for drug rehabilitation) all the way up until he died in 2018 of cancer.
I was marinated in jazz, and I was seasoned in music from home. Song is the literature of South Africa. There’s no political rally that ever happened in South Africa without singing being the main feature.
...
Ansell, G. (2005). Soweto Blues: Jazz, Popular Music, and Politics in South Africa. United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic.
Borek, K. (2017). Hugh Masekela: The Horn of Freedom. Confluence: The Journal of the AGLSP.
Cheers, D. M., Masekela, H. (2005). Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela. United States: Crown Publishing Group.
Matshikiza, T., Matshikiza, J. (2000). With the Lid Off: South African Insights from Home and Abroad 1959-2000. South Africa: M&G Books.
Sizemore-Barber, A. (2012). The Voice of (Which?) Africa: Miriam Makeba in America. Safundi, 13(3-4), 251–276.
Doña Juana Azurduy de Padilla, best known as Juana Azurduy, was born in 1780 in Toroca, Intendency of Potosí, in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata (current day Bolivia). She was the daughter of a wealthy white man who owned a number of properties in the area of La Plata (which is the city of Sucre nowadays), and a chola, a Bolivian term for mestizo women. While very little is known about her childhood, we do know that, in spite of having been raised in wealth and luxury, her mestizo origins and her eventual marriage to independentist activist Manuel Asencio de Padilla, led her to believe firmly in the need for independence from the Spanish monarchy.
Since 1809, Azurduy and her husband joined several revolutions in Bolivia against the already unstable crown, then under the control of Napoleon’s brother Joseph, spending years fighting side by side against the royalist army, the Spanish armed forces stationed in the Viceroyalties of Perú and Río de la Plata. In 1812, she was instrumental in aiding and guarding the rear of the civilian column that marched from Jujuy to Tucumán, in the Northern area of the United Provinces of Río de La Plata, in a massive exodus of the civilian population of the area, in preparation of the royalist advance in the area. During the event known as the Jujuy Exodus, and under the guidance of Argentine generals Manuel Belgrano and Eustoquio Díaz Vélez, she helped more than 1500 people escape from the royalist advancement.
On August 13, 1816, after numerous important victories, and in recognition for her valor in combat, Juana was ascended to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel by the Supreme Director of the Untied Provinces, Juan Martín de Pueyrredón. Just one month later, her and her husband's guerrilla army, called La Republiqueta de La Laguna, were surrounded and defeated in the battle of La Laguna. Azurduy had held back inside the town of La Laguna with a small garrison in order to defend their supplies, ammunition and money, but their encampment was ambushed by a splinter royalist squadron. She was shot twice, once in the leg and once in the chest, but she kept fighting, refusing to give in to pain in order to keep morale high. Her husband was defeated and beheaded, and she was barely able to escape, almost bleeding out from her wounds.
After the defeat, now lieutenant colonel Azurduy, had to face insubordination, betrayal and mutiny from many of her subordinates, because she was a woman. However, she prevailed, as she had proven herself to be a fierce and brave commander, and was able to retain control of her troops. In time, she established a strong friendship with Argentine caudillo Martín Miguel de Güemes, and moved to Salta, Güemes' province. After his death in 1820, she asked the new government of Salta for financial aid to return to Bolivia, but they refused to give her a considerable sum, giving her instead a few mules and 50 pesos (an insufficient amount for such a long trip). It took her seven years to gather enough funds to return to Bolivia, and upon returning to her home country, she found herself forgotten, ignored and disowned by the new authorities, who gave her an arguably laughable yearly pension for two years. Her inherited properties, which she had left behind under care of her sister, had either been confiscated, or given away by her sibling.
She was abandoned by her government, her deeds forgotten and tarnished by falsehoods and myths, her honor reduced to living in extreme poverty. After her only surviving daughter got married, she was left completely alone. In her final years, she adopted a physically disabled boy (the particularities of his disability are still a matter of debate), a distant relative, called Indalecio Salvi. He later recalled that she spent more of her nearly non-existent income in sustaining him than she ever did on herself.
Juana Azurduy died on May 25th, 1862, on the 52nd anniversary of Argentina's revolution. A distinguished military commander, a warrior who fought for the liberty and sovereignty of her and all of South America's peoples, was abandoned and forgotten by the same nations she helped become nations in the first place.
At least, today we remember her. Bolivia honors her as one of its mightiest heroes, as does Argentina. It’s interesting to note, however, that Azurduy continues to be remembered as a fierce warrior, understood to be “akin” to a man when it came to bravery and military cunning. Heather Hennes, a professor of Spanish literature, culture and language at Saint Joseph’s University, explains that from the get-go, Azurduy was mythologized as an ‘amazon’. From a letter sent by Argentine revolutionary Antonio Beruti to General Belgrano, praising the “manlike efforts and gallantry of that amazon doña Juana Azurduy”, all the way to the late 20th Century, with most of the biographies and historical works written about her distinguishing her fierce combat attitude and predisposition over her tactical skill and leadership capabilities, the construction of the ‘azurduyan’ legend, instead of recognizing her as a historical figure on her own merits, has tended to forge her historical presence based on her performing masculinity instead of her own gender identity. However, recent decades have seen the emergence of a sociological, historiographical and cultural movement that has revitalized her image according to her own merits as a woman, a strategist and a tactician, not just as a fighter. Arguably, the beginning of this movement can be set in 1980, when interim president Lidia Gueiler, the first woman to serve as president of Bolivia, determined that 1980 would be “the Year of the Popular Heroine Juana Azurduy de Padilla”, declaring July 12th as a public holiday. Thus began a tendency to associate Azurduy with the ideal, essential spirit of Bolivian women, a tendency that subscribes to the philosophical ideals of Latin American feminism. Since then, several public and non-governmental organizations alike have taken Azurduy’s memory and name as their ideological and cultural flag, including the Juana Azurduy Centre, a non-profit organization created to provide empowerment to Bolivian women both in Sucre and in the rest of the country. Founded in 1989, the Juana Azurduy Centre aims to “change the way social interaction functions in order to eliminate hierarchies and inequalities based in sexual and cultural asymmetries and oppression in detriment of all women, caused by the patriarchal system and its dialectical connection with capitalist and colonial systems, which produce nothing but exploitation and exclusion.” One of the primary goals of the Juana Azurduy Centre is, in essence, to foment initiatives that encourage political, cultural and workplace empowerment for all Bolivian women.
Glückel of Hameln's name is somewhat in flux. The reference to Hameln in her name, from her husband's place of birth, is to a place where she only lived for a short time immediately after her marriage; she was born in, and spent much of her life in, Hamburg. (The name was actually bestowed on her 200+ years after her death.) In actuality, she might have spent parts of her life being referred to in the names of one of her two husbands, or, after their respective deaths, as "the widow Glückel." If asked to give a name, she would have told you that she was Glückel (or, as scholars now prefer, based on how they believe it was pronounced in Yiddish, Glikl) bas Yehuda Leib, Glückel the daughter of Judah Leib, and indeed she was the daughter of Judah Leib and his much younger second wife Beila, and one of their six children.
She was born sometime between 1645-1647, with the date somewhat vague. Her childhood was spent largely in the independent city of Hamburg, though at times her family was expelled, along with the other Ashkenazic Jewish families there, to the neighboring city of Altona. So far as we can tell, her childhood was a peaceful one- her father was a wealthy diamond dealer and she was educated well in Jewish and secular studies. Her childhood, though, was also short- as I discuss here, at the age of twelve she was betrothed to Chayim of Hameln, and at the age of fourteen she married him. Their marriage was, by Glückel's account (and by my parodied account), a happy one; they had fourteen children, of whom thirteen lived to adulthood. Chayim and Glückel were not just marriage but business partners, traveling to trade fairs throughout central and eastern Europe trading in seed pearls. Their youngest child was only three years old when Chayim died of a sudden illness at a relatively young age, and Glückel kept moving along, successfully operating his business and raising (and marrying off, no small task) her remaining children for the next eleven years before remarrying, with some misgivings, to Cerf Levy. This marriage was not nearly the success of her first one; wo years in, Levy lost all of his money (including the large sum that Glückel had brought into the union from her years in business), and ten years afterward, after his death, Glückel went to live with her daughter in Metz, where she died at the age of seventy.
Now, finally, let's talk about how we know what we know (and what we don't know) about Glückel- and why we should care. And the answer is that she wrote an autobiography, and she wrote an autobiography. It's a pretty significant autobiography, both because of its unique nature- it's the only known Yiddish language autobiography by a woman in the premodern era and is therefore a window into a kind of person and way of life that would have been essentially impenetrable otherwise - and it's also considered a premodern Yiddish literary classic. As mentioned above, not only was she literate (as most Jewish women of her time and place would have been), she was an excellent writer who was well versed in the era's Yiddish literary genres, and her memoirs are a fascinating blend of straightforward and very detailed descriptions of events in her life, moralistic tales, heartfelt prayers in the style of Yiddish women's poetry (techines), and folk literature-inspired recountings. In the style of some of the best of Jewish literature in Yiddish, her writing includes numerous references to the Bible- though Glückel herself did not know Hebrew, these kinds of phrases and terms were part of the era's Yiddish vernacular, and were part enough of her inner and outer religious identity that to use them in her memoirs was a natural choice.
Glückel first decided to write the memoirs after the death of her husband Chayim in 1689, when trying to escape the throes of depression into which his death had placed her. The first book- one of seven that she seems to have already mapped out, making this not a diary but a planned memoir- was begun in 1691, and she makes clear in it that she wants her children to know more about their father, who it is clear from the book she loved very dearly. What she chose to include in her memoirs is enlightening, and in many ways what she didn't choose to include is equally so- while she gave birth to fourteen children (and does include some references to her pregnancies and births), she mentions little about what it was like to raise them (besides calling it difficult) and focuses most of her attention on the processes of marrying them off, the elaborate weddings, and the honors that she received from the prestigious families with whom she made her children's matches. (Not only does she not write about her children's childhoods, she doesn't write much about her own, either, except in the context of the war and expulsion which she lived through as a toddler.) When she writes about her relationship with her husband, it's usually in the context of their partnership in business, emphasizing the respect with which he viewed her opinions and their success. Significant historical events and personages are mentioned in the context of her own personal experience with them (such as her father-in-law's belief that Sabbetai Zvi was the messiah), and they're blended with stories that to her are equally significant about her parents, her in-laws, and other relatives and acquaintances who to her are interesting and, potentially, inspirational figures- people who she wants her children to know about.
Essentially, what we see is a portrait of a woman- not quite a typical woman in that she was clearly middle-upper class, but still not too far out of the common- who has a vibrant inner world, solid convictions, and is proud of her accomplishments, particularly as a Jewish merchant- and woman- in a time which had the potential to be volatile. As much as Glückel was relatively fortunate in her life to be in a time of relative peace and to have good relationships with her Christian neighbors, she knew that this could not be taken for granted (she had lived through expulsions and wars herself) and was very conscious of the unevenness of her relationships with those surrounding her. It's therefore not surprising when she focuses on the more equal relationships which she had- with fellow Jews- and so it's there where we see some of the most vibrant descriptions that we currently of Jewish life in the 17th century. These descriptions are essentially unique- certainly unique as the memories of a Jewish woman, but also distinctive in general when it comes to a description of the Jewish communities of the era in central and eastern Europe, and while it's only in relatively recent years that Glückel herself has been studied, her diaries have been used as a window into the historical past, a window from an angle that is otherwise unseen and unknown, for several hundred years. And all because she wanted her children to know more about their father and her life with him, and to gain inspiration and guidance throughout life that she felt that her observations could give.
We have Glückel's diaries today because, while the originals have vanished to time, two copies were passed down by her descendants, who included some quite prominent Jewish families and figures such as the poet Heinrich Heine and the Orthodox separatist rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. One of her 19th/20th century descendants, Bertha Pappenheim, a fascinating figure in her own right who became notable both as a Jewish feminist philanthropist and as "Anna O" in Freud's works, was the first to translate the diaries from then-dying Western Yiddish to German, though it was later that it was re-translated for the purposes of publication. Pappenheim, incidentally, is also the model for the portrait of her that we have today, and on which the snoo above is based- there are no surviving depictions of Glückel herself, and it's hard to know if there ever were any. (Interestingly, u/mimicofmodes pointed out to me that the period dress in the painting- and which we used for the snoo- is actually not accurate to Glückel's actual lifespan, and instead would have been more appropriate to someone from a generation earlier. Ruffs, for example, were apparently out of fashion at the point at which Glückel would have been the age at which she is depicted. It's hard to know whether Bertha, and the artist Leopold Pilochowski, were aware of the anachronism, and if so whether they chose it because the imagery seemed to befit the devout and modest family matriarch who Bertha was immortalizing, as is my own personal guess.)
For further reading, I highly suggest picking up a copy of Glückel's memoirs! The newest one in English, which is now the one preferred by scholars, is Glikl: Memoirs 1691-1719, introduced and edited by Chava Turniansky, probably the foremost expert on Glückel (and editor and translator of a critical Yiddish/Hebrew edition of the memoirs), and translated by Sara Friedman. There aren't many other works written about Glückel, but one that I recommend is Natalie Zemon Davis's Women on the Margins, which includes a section on Glückel- I highly recommend starting off with Zemon Davis's inimitable introduction.
Hello everyone! We're rolling out selections of our newest selection of historical Snoos and their Snoographies every Sunday. Check out last week's here, and as always, a shoutout to our wonderful artist, /u/akau.
Snwhoo's the last one?
