adminafter listening to Radio Zimbabwe and Power F.M stations for a week: ” You Zimbabweans are very progressive. Your radio stations play mostly local music unlike what we are experiencing in South Africa where the DJs seem to be obsessed with music from the West only”.
Sy is an award winning veteran jazz artist who has released two masterpiece albums “Uyivila” and “Second Coming” in South Africa, but is struggling to have them played on air due to the DJs’ obsession with Western music. I explained to him that what he has seen in Zimbabwe today is a recent development, which only started around 2002. Before that, radio in Zimbabwe was as bad if not worse than in South Africa when it came to playing foreign music. It was not until the then Minister of Information and Publicity, Professor Jonathan Moyo came onto the scene and declared that 75 percent of all music played on our stations should be local. The DJs were at a loss as to what to play and they then resorted to playing local artistes whose music resembled Western sounds. Thus the genre, Urban grooves was created.
The genre of music known as Urban Grooves in Zimbabwe was created in a drive to try and protect Zimbabwean culture from Western influence. Radio 3 (now known as Power FM) which was well known for playing American hip-hop and rap music was particularly targeted. The station was moved from the capital city of Harare to Gweru.
The Minister encouraged Zimbabwean artists to develop their own music which would replace the British and American music which was being played by Radio 3 DJs. He also sponsored young artists to showcase their talents by providing them with performance platforms at government organised musical galas throughout the country.
The youths saw this as an opportunity to develop a new genre of music. Thus Urban Grooves was born. The names Roki, Mafrik, Extra Large, Stunner, Sniper, Ex-Q, 2BG, Nasty Trix, Decibel, David Chifunyise, Leonard Mapfumo, Plaxedes Wenyika, Betty Makaya, Alex Kawara, Roy and Royce, Sanii Makalima and Maskiri came to be associated with Urban Grooves.
People began to question whether this move provided for authentic African values or these Urban Groovers were merely an imitation of Black American musicians. Some of them simply took rhythms from American or British hip-hop and put Shona lyrics to the music without changing anything else but others like Extra Large took this challenge more seriously and came out with original works as evidenced in songs such as “Mai Linda”, “Uri Roja Chete”, “Ndinoda Kushamura Newe”, “Small House”, “House Girl” and “Aiwa Mukoma”.
Air-play for their music was guaranteed as this is what the Minister was encouraging. From then onwards, the DJs got used to playing local music. New artistes with American or Jamaican sounds with Shona lyrics have since emerged and Zimbabweans have grown to adapt to such rhythms. The likes of Stunner, King Shaddy, Winky D, Guspy Warrior and Prince Mafukidze are constantly on air because of their foreign sounding grooves. This is what Sy was commenting upon when he visited Zimbabwe.
One brother, who recently returned from America after 12 years of absence and is often glued to the radio commented: “I don’t like the trend which our music has now taken. The radio plays a lot of rubbish these days. In fact I hate local music. Give me Beyonce, Usher, Mary J. Blige or Kanye West anytime and I am ready to party.”
I remember one afternoon in the late nineties (1990’s) driving from the University of Zimbabwe with two students in my car, I put on a John Chibadura cassette and my car stereo system started belting out “5 000 Dollars Kuroora”. The two students were amazed. They looked at each other and kept quiet. One of them suddenly had the guts to ask me, ‘Sir, do you really like this kind of music? We never thought that we would hear that from the likes of you. We thought you were an R&B person.” I explained to them that good music is good music and it transcends all boundaries despite where it comes from. Besides, who am I to shun this great music? John Chibadura was an international star.
A lot of Europeans liked his music as evidenced by his successful tours of Britain and the Netherlands.
I was puzzled, and the next day I took it upon myself to do a little survey among UZ students to find out what kind of music they preferred. Among the 50 or so students I spoke to, no one mentioned local music except two who said they liked Tuku. The rest of them, especially the girls, said they preferred R ‘n’ B. I am not sure that they even knew what they were talking about because when I pressed them to tell me which R‘n’B artistes they liked, I got names such as Joan Armatrading, Tracy Chapman, Dolly Parton, Neil Diamond, David Scobie and Don Williams. When I further asked them if they had heard of artistes such as System Tazvida, Leonard Dembo and Kassongo Band, most of them professed ignorance.
A few declared that they knew these artistes but did not like their music. It took quite a lot of courage to appreciate their own music and to come to terms with Zimbabwean identity. Even today, it takes quite a lot for our urban population to like local music such as sungura or museve as this genre of music is seen as backward or rural by those fashion-conscious urbanites.
Here is a confession from one urban lady, Miriam Tose Majome, who has suddenly realised how sweet Zimbabwean music is. She says, and I quote her verbatim:
“I distinctly remember a song by Chibadura in the early 80’s when I was in Grade 3 thereabouts which was rather rather touching and tragic about “ndakaenda kumusha kwaambuya vangu gore rakapera etc. . .” and the rather funny studio video to it on black and white ZTV vakapfeka mabheri bottom and all. I’d give anything to hear that song again and watch the video. No -one even talks
about that song anymore or lists it on any of his works but it was classic.
Sadly I don’t know what it is called as taive tumasalad back then and never paid attention because it was uncool to acknowledge local music and a crime to let your friends know you even listen to it let alone confess to enjoying it.”
All I can say to Miriam Majome is that, if it is any consolation, you are/were not alone with this type of thinking. There are thousands of Zimbabweans who still think that it’s “uncool” to enjoy local music, yet they secretly do enjoy it, especially museve. If this kind of attitude does not change it becomes detrimental to local music business.
Let’s face it music is a business and there are some local artistes who have done better than the guys who do a regular eight to five job, but why do some sections of society look down upon it? They have developed an attitude where they think music is not work at all. For instance, on Friday August 5, I was listening to ZBC news anchor, Tracy Sibanda, interviewing an artist named D Flex who spoke very eloquently about his music. She then asked him ” So what do you intend to do in the future?” as if what he was doing in music was nothing at all. I wonder if she would have asked the same question to Oliver Mtukudzi.
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Bongani Ndlovu