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| Bhundu Boys |
Book: Music Rocking Zimbabwe
Author: Fred Zindi
Publisher: Zindisc (2014)
ISBN: 1-77905-138-8
Music, that mellow breeze which refreshes nations, decodes the language of the heart and makes one blood of a racially profiled globe, is at the core of Zimbabwean culture.
Through dark days, music is a moody companion for the children of tribulation, and when colour, vista and melody flare up, music courses delight around the passcodes of the soul.
Surprisingly, for a site of vast cultural wealth and staggering genius, there is no tradition of critical reception to match Zimbabwean music.
Prof. Fred Zindi and Joyce Jenje-Makwenda are among the few authorities who have worked extensively to broker critical posterity for local music.
Zindi has written several books on local music, notably “Roots Rocking in Zimbabwe”, “The Pop Music Workbook”, “Music yeZimbabwe” and “Music Rocking from Zimbabwe”.
And now the afro-sporting music encyclopedia and Herald columnist has dropped his seventh publication entitled “Music Rocking Zimbabwe”.
“Music Rocking Zimbabwe” is a comprehensive account of Zimbabwe’s musical tradition from old school, beginning at the mid-century township renaissance, to the present, controversially dubbed the bubblegum generation.
The book is nothing like most academic titles on the arts whose winding preambles promise no immediate relation to the subject.
This is a considerable merit, as most books from universities are tedious put-offs, at best offering occasional gems in a mass of generic history and hardly navigable jargon.
Zindi’s clarity and authority is fit to the task at hand, with anecdotes, touches of humour and crazy hyperboles like “a bassline which could stop an elephant dead in its tracks” speeding up the flip-mode.
Steve Makoni’s response to “Hatichina Wekutamba Naye”, RUNN Family’s tribute track for Samora Machel: “Oh please! Are you the same age with Samora to want to play with him?” is one of these comic moments.
On the other hand, episodes such as Biggie Tembo’s juggling of stand-up comedy, straight whisky and pastoral studies after being booted out of the internationally acclaimed Bhundu Boys border on tragedy.
The book opens with a brief clarification of jargon and a snap outline of musical dispensations, particularly in the West from the Rennaisance to pop music, represented by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson and others, a phase which concurs with the emergence of popular recording artists in Zimbabwe.
The musically uninitiated thus equipped with an understanding of basics such as melody, rhythm, harmony, timbre and texture, Zindi reverts to the heart of the matter: the exclusively Zimbabwean musical experience.
Although Zindi sets out to put together a comprehensive guide to Zimbabwean music for academic purposes, the most interesting, incidentally the longest, section of the book is Zindi’s profiles of the great Zimbabwean musicians.
Zindi redeems a vast expanse of Zimbabwe’s music dynasties from an extinction phase. Local researchers have not done much to set against posterity the creative wealth of early Zimbabwean music.
A random search on the Internet returns a massive inventory of biography and research on the musicians of other regions but so little, at least in academic cast, on Zimbabwe’s musical strivings.
Zindi significantly plugs the void, rewinding in time to capture the exploits of Zimbabwean artists from as far back as the 1930s.
The featured artists are not racially compartmentalised because, as Zindi metaphorically observes elsewhere, the melody of the piano is in black and the white keys alike.
Zindi suggests that music was a necessary function of human existence since the beginning of time but tentatively highlights the 14th century as the period when traditional musical instruments such as the chipendani, hosho, hwamanda and chigufe are said to have been in evidence locally.
Zimbabwe’s musical boom begins in earnest between the 1940s and 1960s when the likes of Laina Mataka, Dorothy Masuka, Mura Nyaruka, Sam Matambo, Susan Chenjerai, Safirio Madzikatire and Zexie Manatsa emerge.
“From the 1940s to the 1950s, Zimbabwean traditional music had a basic rhythm known as tsava-tsava,” Zindi recalls. “Most urban young people would get together at community centres to learn to play the saxophone, the banjo or the rhythm.”
These amateur ventures, says Zindi, led to trios who played the tsava-tsava rhythm, their mergers with choirs facilitating the rise of Zimbabwe’s earliest pop bands.
Zimbabwean music assumed a cosmopolitan resume in the 1960s when tsava-tsava cross-pollinated with rhumba, cha-cha-cha, smanje-manje and other influences.
Zindi references the Harare Mambo Band’s ability to play jit, kwela, reggae, soul, sungura, rock, rhumba, traditional and mbaqanga in one performance as an example of the subsisting diversity of local music.
He places the breakthrough of sungura, arguably Zimbabwe’s most popular music genre, in the early 1980s, with exponents such as the Sungura Boys featuring notables Ephraim Joe, John Chibadura, Simon and Naison Chimbetu and Mitchell Jambo and the equally star-studded Khiama Boys featuring Nicholas Zakaria, Alick Macheso and System Tazvida.
Zindi extensively profiles the foremost acts of Zimbabwean music across the genres including Leonard Zhakata, Charles Charamba, Bhundu Boys, Four Brothers, Ilanga, Mokoomba, Oliver Mtukudzi, Leonard Dembo, Pied Pipers, Alick Macheso and Jah Prayzah.
Zindi might have done a better job had he provided more close-up detail and allowed us to hear the artists in their own words, given his exclusive access to the experiences of some of the musicians.
What he forcefully brings out, though, is the professional deficit in Zimbabwe’s showbiz circuit and our deplorable failure to appreciate our own artists, factors which have conspired against Zimbabwean artists’ claim to universal recognition.
Take Marshal Munhumumwe’s Four Brothers. After a sustained torrent of massive hits including “Rugare”, “Vimbai”, “Zuro Chisara” and the golden single of Zimbabwean Independence, “Makorokoto”, the Four Brothers remained poor, unable to buy their own instruments or to tour beyond Machipisa.
The success of their record sales did not expedite their fortunes as the band was only paid 4 percent of recording royalties and 40 percent of gate-takings.
Ironically, it took the intervention of international promoter Stuart Lyons in 1986, and the subsequent deal with Cooking Vinyl for the group to taste commercial success.
BBC’s John Peel would later champion the Four Brothers as “the world’s number one band” and flaunt “Pasi Pano Pane Zviyedzo” as one of the best records of all time.
Zindi indicts Zimbabwean promoters’ deplorable treatment of local artists and their failure to harness homegrown talent, this starkly contrasted to their lavish handling of international artists.
Sober critics would agree that most of these overrated international artists are inferior to our local talent better but, as late national hero Cde Ariston Chambati once said, if we cannot take ourselves seriously the world has no reason to take us seriously.
This assessment applies across the creative circuit where poor sales, mediocre administration and status-oriented, hence static, critical reception threatens to sink whatever Zimbabwe has to offer in terms of talent.
But if traffic lights are a sustained flood of red for Zimbabwean artists, then defiance and resilience were the keynote values of the few who eventually make it to the top.
Zimbabwe’s foremost gospel artist Charles Charamba is a case in point. Charamba struggled to land a recording deal as Gramma insisted that he ditch his disruptive blend of gospel, jit and sungura for South African rhythms in the tradition of Sipho Makabane, Rebecca Malope and Vuyo Mokoena who were then big in Zimbabwe.
Charamba, along with Zora legend Leonard Zhakata and Zimbabwe’s recent exports, Mokoomba and Jah Prayzah, is an example of the inevitable triumph of genius over the conspiracy of market forces.
Zindi’s important contribution to the critical canon of Zimbabwean music is, however, compromised by minor issues of accuracy.
For example, Jah Prayzah tracks “Dande”, featuring Chiwoniso Maraire, and “Kumusha”, featuring Somandla Ndebele, are erroneously assigned to “Sungano Yerudo” (2009) instead of “Ngwarira Kuparara” (2011). The “Tsviriyo” video is also mixed up with “Yambuka Rukova”.
“Music Rocking Zimbabwe” is necessary resource for aspirant musicians as it provides information on procedures, rights and ethics of the music business including publishing contracts and securing promoters.
Very good work Stanley. Keep it up. In my view your installments are becoming essential reading on Mondays. Your diligence and enthusiasm are infectious. There is, however, a point of correction on at least one account in your most recent post. Strictly speaking you cannot place Zexie Manatsa in the same bracket as Sam Matambo and Dorothy Masuka. Comparatively speaking, he is a latterday phenomenon. I was a teenager in Bulawayo in the mid-1960s when Zexie and his brother Stanley came to the town. In those days they played Marabi (a sort of township jazz) and did so without vocals. It was only in the early 1970s that 'The Green Arrows' (Zexie Manatsa's band) began to have a nationalimpact with Chipo Chiroorwa the album and the single giving them phenomenal success. The Green Arrows were the first Zimbabwean band to go gold with Chipo Chiroorwa grossing well over 12000 copies. On the single Chipo Chiroorwa Stanley Manatsa created one of the most inimitable guitar riffs in the whole of Southern Africa.The late 1950s and mid to late 1960s belonbged to foreign bands like The OK Success, The Lipopo Jazz Band, the Verdettes etc and also saw the emergence of Rock bands such as The Rollickings fronted by Stanley Ukama, The Echoes with some guy called Job on lead guitar and vocals. These bands mostlty played Beatles and Rolling Stones hits. The Harare Mambos and Thomas Mapfumo with The Springfields Band were also part of this dispensation. It would be amiss not to mention Manu Kambani who played his guitar like Jimi Hendrix!
P.S. And oh, where you speak of Sam Matambo, the most notably gifted, composer, singer, dancer and comedian of the time was Sonny Sondo who together with Sam Matambo and two others were members of the City Quads, the first group in this country to record a full album. Ndafunafuna, is a timeless hit from Sonny Sondo that still gets airplay today and has been done many Zimbabwean artistes and bands including most recently by Prudence Katomeni-Mbofana.
Correction noted. My mistake. Interesting retrospect of a rocking age. Will be sure to visit Gramma for what survives from this period.