No Borders

At 78 years young, Masekela sounds as fiercely committed and as vibrant as ever on what is the 44th album of his remarkable career. He says he set out to make an album with an ‘international diaspora kind of feel’ and a smorgasbord of rhythms drawn from across the world's most musical continent sway and shuffle in and out of the trademark township jazz tropes. The opener ‘Shuffle & Bow' is an angry tirade about the legacy of slavery with some mighty septuagenarian blowing on Bra Hugh's flugelhorn. ‘Shango’ shimmers to a Nigerian Afrobeat groove. The Congolese singer Tresor lends an upbeat kwassa kwassa swagger to ‘Congo Women’ and Zimbabwe's Oliver Mtukudzi joins the party on the haunting ‘Tapera’. For the first time ever, Masekela duets with his son Selema (aka Alekesam) on ‘In an Age’, which includes a thrilling Zulu rap and was produced in Los Angeles by Sunny Levine, whose father Stewart helmed Masekela's number-one single, ‘Grazing in the Grass’ almost half a century ago. There's a lovely tribute to Mama Africa herself on a nostalgic township instrumental simply titled ‘Makeba’ while the feel-good ‘Heaven in You’ features the voice of J'Something from the white South African pop trio Mi Casa. Fabulous stuff from the grand old man.