The idea of a perfect Cape Town luxury hotel is not out of reach.  Nestled in this beautiful and very lively city, the hotels are designed for your comfort.  With a brilliant combination of hospitality and style, you will sleep like a baby and wake up remembering you are on an adventure.  There is an expansive sense of design here, with some of the most cutting edge innovations in global sensibility.  The food is excellent, and will constantly please and surprise the palate.  The culture inside and outside the doors of the luxury hotel is absolutely stunning.

Cape Town, with its troubled history of apartheid, is a kind of distilled version of South Africa in general.  Everything happened here, in some senses, and it is really a smaller version of the history of the country, and by extension, of humanity.  To know its culture is to know its history, and one of the cultural giants here is Hugh Masekela.  Born in 1939, Hugh Masekela is an internationally-known horn player, band leader, and song writer.  He works in jazz, with many different styles based on traditions from the U.S. and Africa, and is known as an innovator and breakthrough artist all over the world.  Once married to the great South African singer Miriam Makeba, his public life is fascinating.

He played in many different jazz bands and musical revues when he was younger, and found his first real bite at world fame when he played in the orchestra in Todd Matshikiza’s theatrical success, “King Kong.”  A few years later, in 1960, the Sharpeville Massacre and subsequent riots caused many South Africans to exile themselves, and he ended up in Europe and the U.S. In 1962, he met Louis Armstrong, and they maintained a long friendship.  Hugh Masekela has reached an international fame that is reserved only for a very few world greats, and his birthday celebrations are always huge events in South Africa.  Since he started returning to his homeland, the response from his fans has been great, and it always marks a profound event, one that is based on years of pain and grief that is part of South African history.  This music maker has done his fair share of making the world sweeter with his sounds.