SURPRISINGLY agile for a man of his age, Hugh Masekela. Dancing his way through the opening night of his UK tour at the Philharmonic on Saturday night, the 71-year-old could have easily been mistaken for a man 20 years his junior.

Billed as a night celebrating the real sound of South Africa and what a joyful night it was.

Opening act the Mahotella Queens had threatened to steal the show with a purely acapella 30-minute set of ‘mbaqanga’, the wildly infectious and incredibly danceable Zulu jazz which ruled the roost in the rainbow nation during the apartheid years.

Theirs was a tough act to follow but, unsurprisingly, Masekela rose to the challenge easily.

His music veers from the laid back to the ferociously frantic and had the audience dancing in the aisles by the finish.

But although he strolls onto the stage with horn in hand and is rarely pictured without it, his not-so-secret weapon is his voice.

An earth-shakingly powerful instrument in its own right, it lifts his shows from the memorable to the outstanding.

He has a neat line in between song banter, too, with his tall tale of how he’s actually a scouser of Irish origin who played on the banks of the Mersey with Ringo Starr as a boy one I won’t forget in a hurry.

Andrew Greenhalgh