TE||Freedom’s blast
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Hugh Masekela
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音乐| 精读 | 翻译 | 词组
Freedom’s blast
自由的号角
本文英文部分选自经济学人Obituary版块
Hugh Masekela, trumpeter, songwriter and apartheid-fighter, died on January 23rd, aged 78
休·麦塞克勒（Hugh Masekela），是小号手、唱作人和种族隔离斗士。于2018年1月23日去世，享年78岁。
THE parcel arrived by courier post. It was big, rectangular, and had come all the way from America, where 17-year-old Hugh Masekela knew nobody except the folk, like Glenn Miller or the Andrews Sisters, whose music rang out of the family’s wind-up gramophone. He tore off the paper, flicked the clasps, and found—a used F.X. Huller trumpet sent by Louis Armstrong. Wild with joy, he leapt out into the dusty streets of his township outside Johannesburg, where the worn-down people stopped to stare at him. He was waving his horn like a weapon. And so it became.
邮政速递从美国邮来一个大的长方形包裹。17岁的休·麦塞克勒只知道几个美国民间艺人，如格伦·米勒（ Glenn Miller）或安德鲁姐妹（ Andrews Sisters），他们的音乐回响在家中的发条留声机中。他撕开包装纸，按下扣环，看见了路易斯·阿姆斯特朗（Louis Armstrong）寄来自己的 F.X. Huller 小号；他欣喜若狂，连蹦带跳地跑到约翰内斯堡外小镇那尘土飞扬的街道上，衣衫褴褛的人们停下脚步注视着他。他挥舞着像武器一样的小号，而它确实也成为了他的“武器”。
It was not his first trumpet. That had been bought for him by Trevor Huddleston, his school chaplain, after he had promised to make no more trouble if he had one. Ever since seeing “Young Man With a Horn”, a film about the trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke, he knew what he wanted to do. He already tootled all his spare hours with the Huddleston Jazz Band in the carpentry shop. But with Satchmo’s trumpet, also sent on a hint from Huddleston, he could take on the world, or at least start to loosen up his own godforsaken land.
这不是他的第一小号。学校的牧师，特雷弗.赫德尔斯顿（Trevor Huddleston）给他买了第一把小号，因为他承诺有了小号就不会再惹事。自从他看了电影《双凤夺鸾》（这个电影是关于小号手毕克斯·拜德贝克的传奇经历），他知道了自己想要什么。先前，他已经把所有空闲时间都花在与哈迪爵士乐队在木材店吹小号，但是，自从赫德尔斯顿又送给他一个沙其蒙（Satchmo）小号，他仿佛可以用征服世界，或至少拯救他自己荒芜的土地。
On this horn he raised the roof in 1959 on the tour of “King Kong”, the first multiracial musical in South Africa. Round it he formed the Jazz Epistles, who cut the first record ever made there by a black band. When they played the Ambassadors in Cape Town all races filled the hall, and even white girls threw themselves at him. He was hot, but so harassed as a bloody kaffir that he appealed to friends to get him a scholarship abroad. The breaking point was the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, when 69 African protesters were killed by white police, and public gatherings of more than ten blacks were banned. Live music vanished. He left for the Manhattan School of Music and, for three decades, lived in America. At college his beloved trumpet was found to be so leaky and full of gunk that it was declared unplayable.
凭借这个小号独奏曲他在1959年的音乐剧《金刚》的巡演中名声大噪，《金刚》也是第一部在南非跨种族巡演的音乐剧。通过这部音乐剧巡演，他组建了the Jazz Epistles乐队，世界上第一支发布专辑的黑人乐队。当他们在开普敦演奏Ambassadors时，礼堂里挤满了各个种族的人，即使是白人女孩也为他们的表演而疯狂。然而，尽管休·麦塞克勒这个时候很出名，但是他仍然对黑鬼这个可恶的称呼深恶痛绝（kaffir是对非裔黑人很恶毒的称呼），因此他决定要他的朋友帮他弄到出国留学的机会。1960年的沙佩维尔惨案是他人生一个转折点，当时有69名非裔抗议者遭到了白人警察的杀害，并且政府禁止超过10个黑人的集会。现场音乐因此没落，于是他去了曼哈顿音乐学院并在美国生活了三十年。在学校里面他发现他珍爱的小号已经严重的漏气并且内部还塞满了脏东西，毫无疑问已经不能再用了。
He never meant to leave Africa for so long. It lay at the heart of his playing, in tribal chants and folk songs and especially in mbaqanga, the music of the illegal bars or shebeens where miners in the townships would go after work to get stuporous on sorghum beer. His grandmother ran one, and when small he was her lookout, watching for the police. Mbaqanga was played on acoustic guitars and double-basses, with girls singing close harmony while the miners danced in rubber work boots, stamping away their sorrow. He combined this with American bebop and the horn style he liked best: lazy phrasing and long notes to show off his fat, beautiful tone, singing and playing in much the same register. In time he added samba and calypso grooves, a bit of rock, a bit of rap, a pot pourri from the whole African diaspora. “Jazz” did not begin to cover it. Miles Davis, his idol among trumpeters, had urged him to be different anyway: “Nobody knows the shit that you know.”
他始终心系非洲，从来也没想过会离开那里这么久，这一想法也体现了他所有作品的核心思想，包括他的民俗和民间曲目，尤其是在mbaqanga中体现得尤为明显，mbaqanga是一种在一些非法和地下酒吧非常流行的南非音乐，很多乡镇的矿工们常常会在下班后来到这里喝上一杯高粱酒买醉。他的祖母就开了一间这样的酒吧，小的时候，休·麦塞克勒就给祖母放哨，提防警察。Mbaqanga由原声吉他和低音提琴演奏，紧接着女孩儿们和声吟唱，同时穿着橡胶工装靴的矿工们随着音乐跳舞，汲此冲淡生活中的悲伤。休·麦塞克勒将mbaqanga与美国bebop爵士乐结合在一起，还加进了一点他自己最爱的小号独奏——懒散的乐句和拖长的音符能够把他浑厚优美的音色发挥到极致。这些音乐相互之间几乎无缝融合了，休·麦塞克勒又适时地加进了桑巴和加力骚曲的旋律，还有一点点摇滚乐，一点点rap，以及所有非裔侨民音乐的大杂烩。爵士乐的流行并没有掩盖mbaqanga的光芒，休·麦塞克勒的鼓手偶像迈尔斯·戴维斯（Miles Davis）先前对他说过“没人能懂你那点东西”，力劝他试着改变一下自己的风格。
The balance was hard to strike in America. If his music was too African, in that land of apartheid in a different hat, it didn’t please audiences. If it was too poppy or west-coast, it didn’t please him. He was miserably homesick, and would wander into Central Park just to talk township slang to himself. At his moment of greatest success in America, with “Grazing in the Grass”, at the top of the charts for three weeks in 1968, he was so dazed with booze, blow, pot and sex that he could hardly function. Trips to west and central Africa in the early 1970s turned into another shambles of self-destruction, relieved only by partnerships with famous local musicians. This was Africa, but he was still not home.
身处美国，他的音乐风格很难找到一个平衡：如果太过非洲化，那么在这块充斥着种族隔离的土地上，听众不会买单；但倘若太过美国化，西海岸风格太重，他自己不会开心。他太想家了，于是经常到中央公园散步，自言自语，说说家乡的方言。凭借单曲《Grazing In The Grass》，休·麦塞克勒在1968年全美音乐排行榜上连续三周蝉联冠军，一举成名。当时他兴奋坏了，每天沉迷于香槟、美女和歌舞，以至于几乎不能正常工作。20世纪70年代早期，他几次每次回到非洲西部和中部都深受打击。只有和当地著名的音乐家在一起的时候才感到心情放松。他虽在故土，却觉得不自在，失去了家乡感。
Home was where the music was. Rhythms of Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana; lyrics of township romances, girls sashaying to get water, rowdy shebeens. The songs kept coming across the Atlantic like a tidal wave. “Stimela” (Coal Train) described black miners digging and drilling in the belly of the earth to bring wealth to glittering Johannesburg, eating mush from iron plates, living in filthy barracks, torn from their loved ones by the screaming train. “Soweto Blues”, searingly sung by his sometime lover, sometime wife, Miriam Makeba, marked the killing of hundreds of young protesters by the police in 1976: “just a little atrocity”, deep in the City of Gold. His horn lamented that he could not return, even to bury his mother; that his records were banned there, and that in 1980 he could get no nearer than Botswana, where he set up a studio and music school. Paul Simon’s “Graceland” album of 1986 seemed to do as much for African music as he had, pushing towards freedom. But his trumpet always gave him a sharper edge. The next year he was singing “Bring back Nelson Mandela” with raised fist, his anthem for the anti-apartheid struggle.
哪里有音乐，哪里才是他的家乡所在。家乡在祖鲁、科萨、茨瓦纳语的节奏里，在乡间小镇中浪漫流连的歌词中，在女孩子们快乐的舞蹈不怕沾水的瞬间，也在喧哗热闹的地下酒吧里。他的歌像海浪般从大西洋的那端不断传来。“stimela”（煤火车）讲述了黑人煤矿工人在大地上不断开凿、挖掘，给约翰内斯堡的人们不断创造财富，他们吃着铁盘子里的蘑菇充饥，住着简陋的房子里，在轰鸣的火车声中想念心爱的人们。米尔娅姆·马科巴（Miriam Makeba）曾是他的生命中情人，也是他的妻子，由她唱出了“Soweto Blues”这首歌，表达对1976年“索韦托惨案”中，警察杀死了上千名年轻抗议者的愤怒之情。他的哀叹像号角声不断回响，因为他的专辑在家乡禁止发行，他不能回家，甚至连埋葬他母亲都没有办法。到了九十年代，他甚至不能接近博茨瓦纳，那个他创办工作室和音乐学校的地方。1986年保罗·西蒙的专辑“Graceland”对非洲音乐影响似乎能够跟他一样，都呼吁自由思想。但是，他的心中一直存在忧患意识。第二年，他挥着拳头高唱“Bring back Nelson Mandela”，号召人们为反对种族隔离而不断奋斗。
His eventual return to Johannesburg was like a dandy’s, in expensive half-coats, scent and shiny shoes, for he had always enjoyed good clothes, and now he was a star. He had a fine trumpet too, a Vincent Bach, which had cost him $150 in New York when he had sadly put Satchmo’s aside. With this he could bring audiences in concert halls to their feet. But Bra Hugh was just as pleased to play to a barefoot crowd among the shacks of Alexandra Township outside the city, giving them a taste of his undiminished joy, and showing what one poor black boy could do.
他最终光鲜亮丽地回到了约翰内斯堡，穿着昂贵的短外套，飘香闪亮的鞋子，因为他一直都很享受一身好行头，况且他还是个明星。他也有了一支很棒的小号，文森特·巴赫牌，这是在他伤心地丢下沙其蒙（Satchmo）小号时花了150美元在纽约买的。有了这个小号，他可以让观众在音乐厅为他起立喝彩。但休叔更喜欢在城外的亚丽山德拉镇棚户之间为普通大众弹奏，让他们感受自己永远不变的快乐，展示一个穷苦黑人男孩可以有的成就。
翻译组：
Yi, 女，财务民工，经济学人爱好者
Cece，女，消防工作者，经济学人爱好者
Shirly，女，笔译研究生，经济学人爱好者
Amber，女，文学研究生，经济学人爱好者
校核组：
Cece，女，消防工作者，经济学人爱好者
Lucia，女，翻译学硕士三年制，经济学人爱好者
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