Dorothy Masuka: Age-old inspiration

had gone to. Well, this column has managed to unearth her.
She read the article from Norway and decided to send me an e-mail straight away.
She says she has been living in Oslo, Norway for the past year after it dawned on her that she was not earning enough money in Zimbabwe. She is currently working at the Oslo Music Academy in the Pedagogisk Department.
Although I am still yet to hear her latest album, Salundela, she tells me that it is getting rave reviews in Europe.
The CD was released under the Ethnikk Music Club label and is distributed by Norway Platekompaniet.no The national newspaper Aftenposten.no has placed this album as the best coming out of Africa.
Busi has found a new love in Norway to kill off her lonely nights although she won’t give me his name.
While in Norway she has managed to pay off the tuition fees of her two daughters, one who recently graduated from Edinburgh University in the UK and the second one about to complete actuarial science in Australia.
Last week, she and another Zimbabwean, Hope Masike, teamed up in Oslo for a live concert in front of international audiences.
I am told the concert went down a bomb. The mystery surrounding Busi is now solved.
But now where is Dorothy Masuka her mentor from Bulawayo?
Some of you, especially the youngsters born in the 1980s and 1990s will ask: “Who is Dorothy Masuka? What nationality is she? What did she sing? Is she still alive? If so, How old is she?”
I will try and answer some of these questions:
As we know today, very few Zimbabwean women took to the stage in the early days of Zimbabwean popular music.
One had to be very brave to do that. One such example is none other than Dorothy Masuka.
Dorothy Masuka, popularly known as “Auntie Dot” was born in Bulawayo on September 3 1935.
In 2005, we celebrated her 70th birthday at Crown Plaza Monomotapa Hotel in Harare. Zimbabwe at that time Dorothy was growing up, was called Southern Rhodesia.
Her father was originally from Zambia and he worked as a chef at a hotel in Bulawayo. Her mother was Zulu. Dorothy was the fourth of seven children.
At the age of 12, she and her family moved to South Africa where she attended school at a Catholic school in Johannesburg.
Soon, her talent as a singer was spotted during school concerts. She fell in love with Jazz music as well as South African Kwela and Marabi music.
At one time when Dorothy was only 16, she ran away from her boarding school to join Philemon Magotsi’s band called “African Ink Spots”.
Her school and her parents were upset by this move as they wanted her to continue with school, but she went back for a short while and then left again for Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where she pursued her career as a singer. It was on her way back to Johannesburg that she penned the hit song Hamba Notsokolo.
At the age of 19 she was invited to audition for Troubador Record Company in South Africa and she was successful.
That became the first rung for her ladder to fame as she was soon to join another popular female singer known as Dolly Rathebe.
At the age of 20, she joined a black musical revue in South Africa, which included the famous Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela.
They called themselves African Jazz and Variety. This is the period when Dorothy wrote many hit songs such as Pata Pata, Kulala, Khauleza, Khuteni Zulu and Ndizulu Zule Goli and Makeba is known to have used some of these hits in her later recordings and performances.
Masuka’s music became very popular in South Africa throughout the 1950s, but when the songs became more serious the South African Apartheid government began to question her.
Her song Dr Malan was banned by the authorities. In 1961, while in Bulawayo, she also wrote a song for Patrice Lumumba who was a political activist in the Congo.
It was this song which forced her into exile when the Special Branch in Bulawayo advised her not to return to Southern Rhodesia.
Dorothy fled to Malawi and then to Tanzania between 1961 and 1965. In 1965, she went back to Bulawayo, but had to flee again, this time into Zambia and not to go back until Zimbabwe became independent in 1980.
In 1982 she went back to Johannesburg where she released the album Magumede.
She went back to Zimbabwe and did some more recordings of songs such as Nhingirikiri and Gona ra Machingura in the late 1980’s.
These became instant hits in Zimbabwe. In 2001 she released Mzilikazi and followed this up with a tour of London and New York accompanied by the Mahotella Queens in 2002.
Dorothy has travelled extensively throughout the world, thrilling those fortunate enough to catch her performances. She is received in many African countries by Heads of State and loved by the people as one of Africa’s greatest female performing artists. She has toured extensively in the African continent and has been able to deliver her songs in the different languages of each country she performs in.
She speaks Shona, Ndebele, Zulu, English, Swahili, Nyanja, Lozi and Bemba, to mention only a few of the languages at her finger tips.
In 2002 when she toured England, she had audiences sweating and panting at the jam-packed venues in cities such as London, Manchester, Coventry, Bristol and Birmingham.
She has appeared on English radio and television programmes such as the Big World Café, Global beat Box, Charlie Gillets Capital Radio Show, Women’s Hour, BBC Radio 4, Jazz F.M, BBC African Service, and Andy Kershaw’s BBC Radio 1 Show, Jo Shinners show on Greater London Radio and many other shows.
When she toured Europe the same year, European audiences were treated to nights to remember by this charismatic female African artist.
One promoter who had hired her to perform at the Melkweg in Amsterdam and at the Nijmegen Music Centre confessed that at first he was scared of bringing Miss Masuka to these venues which are often frequented by youngsters aged between 18 and 30.
He said he thought he was taking a big risk by presenting this rather oldish African singer to hip-hop fans in the Netherlands, but he was wrong. These kids loved it. The promoter then took her to Switzerland where she performed at the Dolce Vita where he was also scared that his teenage Swiss audience would walk out.
No! They loved it. She even closed the show by singing an Elvis Presley rendition of You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog, Barking All the Time.
The kids were ecstatic!
In Africa, she is claimed by many nations. The South Africans think that Dorothy is theirs because she went to school there from the age of 12.
The Zambians also want to own her because, although born in Zimbabwe, her father was Zambian and she later spent a great part of her life in Zambia.
However, Dorothy will tell you that it is Zimbabwe, the country of her birth, where she has her deepest roots.
This explains why she kept running back to Bulawayo even during her school days.
Today, although she has been quiet for some time, she remains a big inspiration for younger artists such as Doreen Ncube, Busi Ncube, Yvonne Chaka Chaka and Dudu Manhenga who have all imitated some of her songs over the years.
l Fred Zindi is a Professor at the University of Zimbabwe. He is also a musician and an author of several books on music. He can be contacted via e-mail on [email protected]