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School pupils who came for a tour of The Herald last week Friday, and I had the honour to show them how news is collected and written.
One of them asked one of those questions you don’t expect from that age group (Grade 4 to 7): “Why is it that culture comes under entertainment?”
As I meandered through some plausible answer, I thought that it was about time I paid tribute to the ambassadorial role that King Isaac has played since his student days at Indiana University’s Bloomington campus.
That is where we met, where together with Catholic priest Father Emmanuel Ribeiro of the “Muchadura” fame, you were studying Ethnomusicology.
Higher and Tertiary Education minister Dr Stan Mudenge was one of the students to pass through the institution.
Since you are going places with your academic and musical careers, your story would not be complete if I don’t record bits and pieces of your early academic life as I observed it towards the end of 1992.
Interestingly, on December 13 2010, John Marsischky wrote: “You and Manny (Fr Ribeiro) were asking where Isaac disappeared to . . . stardom it seems is the answer! Maybe you can write about him and do an interview for The Herald”! This was after he became the first Zimbabwean to be nominated for the coveted Grammy award, which has already been widely reported.
John was in Zimbabwe last December, but back then, the Zimbabwean community enjoyed the Marsischky’s hospitality and generosity, as they opened their home to us, where we sang, played drums and danced during our national days and other public holidays.
His late mother Trudy, painstakingly painted a larger than life Zimbabwean flag.
It was after John’s visit last year that I realised that their bond with Zimbabwe centred on their native American origins.
Those who know American history understand the struggles of a people robbed and dispossessed by a colonial system.
It was 1992. King Isaac was already a household name at Indiana University, and the moment people knew that this writer was from Zimbabwe, they asked me whether I knew Isaac Kalumbu.
The countless times I was asked made me wonder why Zimbabwe and Kalumbu were synonymous. He was doing his Masters degree in Ethnomusicology and he was also leader of a reggae band, which was quite popular on and off campus. A few weeks into the first semester, Isaac came in handy as he agreed to one of three respondents on a project in the Information and Society class taught by Lizzie Davenport. We were supposed to look at library users’ information seeking behaviours, which are very difficult to execute, especially if it is direct observation. Information seeking depends on a number of variables – why the information is required; the user’s background e.g, age, exposure to a variety of information sources, expectations of how far a library can answer one’s questions, etc. But Isaac gladly obliged.
Below is an extract of King Isaac’s portion regarding his information seeking behaviour:
(Isaac), a final year student in the Ethnomusicology Department working on one of his major projects in a field of his choice; he is interested in the changes that have taken place in the African-American music during the period, 1945-1960. He will also try to concentrate on “jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, gospel and bepop”. He will also try to analyse contributions to African-American music by major artistes like Charles Brown, Ruth Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Louis Jordan, etc. He has already done some background reading on the subject in the two assigned class readings.
Approach used to date – the user (Isaac) indicated that as he always does with the majority of his papers, his first approach is using the information online (online library catalogue). After using it for almost two years now, he feels quite comfortable with it and he feels that it is “great” since nearly all his enquiries are answered. In very few occasions now does he have to go and seek the librarians’ assistance? Already, he has managed to search for information on jazz and the results are as follows: when he searched under the term “African American music”, he was cross-referenced to ‘Afro American’ music.
As a general comment, he felt that the information online and the Library of Congress should not be using “Afro American” because that is not the commonly used term. This, he also felt makes you feel like you have to change your terminology in your writings. The other problem with their controlled language is that it does not always tally with the indexing terms used in the texts, because a large number of the texts he has used use “African American”.
However, because the term was too broad, he decided to search under “jazz” and again, there were thousands and thousands of records. After consulting the Library of Congress Subject Headings, he narrowed down his search to “jazz 1941-1950”, and “jazz 1951-1960”.
Although there are a number of records under this section, there are at least some helpful guides, e.g, listings of bibliographies on the subject; history and criticism materials; periodicals; biographies and general books.
Although he is not sure yet how he might start, he will just take a few citations from each of the categories and then go and browse either in their reference collections or in the relevant stacks. He particularly likes browsing because sometimes he just “stumbles into something really interesting, which might give a better clue on how to approach the topic”.
Isaac also commented that since this is a very wide subject area, this will call for important background reading so that when he analyses the issues, he doesn’t spend time at the catalogue terminal. Background reading will also give him the subject or keyword terms he is likely going to use. And, bibliographies would probably be his starting point.
It is difficult to figure out whether the user (Isaac) will manage to satisfactorily get all the sources he requires. Although he has mastered use of the electronic catalogue, and he seems to feel that it answers all his questions, I felt that the use of other databases might yield him faster and better results.
however, he pointed out that he had never used any of the databases, and he really wouldn’t say he knew any offhand unless he consulted librarians.
And, he feels that having to start learning how to use the databases might take him longer to finish his project, and since he doesn’t know their difference with IO, he doesn’t feel any obligation to use them.
As an observer, I also felt that he will need to narrow down his topic to fewer areas because what he has at the moment are a number of different subjects with thousands of entries in IO. It would be interesting to see how he selects from all these sources.
Other memorable events
There are other memorable events. A well-renowned film producer (whose name I cannot mention for professional reasons) came to Zimbabwe and did a documentary on HIV and Aids. However, there were a few lines in the film that were in Shona and he needed voice-overs. Myself and Isaac were asked to do that for a fee. We gave conditions: we would only do it after watching the film first. He obliged. After watching the documentary, we raised some questions:
lHad permission been sought to film the alleged HIV and Aids sufferers?
lWere they paid?
lWould the documentary be flighted on ZTV before it was shown in other parts of the world?
We got answers to all the issues we raised but after that we turned him down, and he had to look for students from other African countries to do the voice-overs. They were surprised why we had turned down an opportunity to make a quick buck. When he returned to Zimbabwe to do his field research, one of the musicians he wanted to speak with was Leonard Dembo. When he returned, he told me, “I was unable to talk to him because he was busy with the construction of his Belvedere house”.
But he was determined to do his doctorate, which he completed long after I had left.
In 1994/95 a group of African journalists visited the university, and we hosted them at Isaac’s apartment. I never forgot the Ghanaian lady, director of a TV station. She said, “Tandayi, there are no germs in Africa. If there were, we would have all died by now. Don’t throw away that chicken (which had fallen on the carpet while serving)”.
Isaac was not showy about his accomplishments. He was a brilliant student, which went to show that he was able to manage his time – full time student and full time band leader/member.
But the ethnomusicology programme did more than producing people like Isaac.
A number of American students from that programme have done their research for their PhDs in Zimbabwe.
These include Linda Williams the saxophonist who played with legendary Afro-jazz musician, Simangaliso Tutani; Diane Thram who did her research with spirit mediums in Murehwa district.
Diane, who is now teaching music at a South African university has been to Zimbabwe many times.
I recall how taken in she was with being a spirit medium and at one point she believed that whatever spirit she had was going to manifest at one of the many gatherings she attended in Murehwa.
King Isaac, as an artiste and academic, has done Zimbabwe proud and has been a good ambassador.
I hope that the Hartzell school pupil who asked why culture is put under entertainment will one day understand, for culture is a cumulation of our whole being.
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