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“I don’t see myself as Shona. I am Zimbabwean. I even try to sing songs in Ndebele. I am not good in Ndebele. I sing in my broken Ndebele, because I am trying to get through to people. An artiste is supposed to do that. They are there to represent themselves and everyone. Not just a certain dialect or language.” — Oliver Mtukudzi.
I feel happy and I feel honoured that youngsters understand what I am doing. Some of them may think that (the music) is old fashioned, but if they fall for it and appreciate it, I am happy about that. — Oliver Mtukudzi.
“The reason (I don’t retire) is because I didn’t apply to be myself so one can’t retire from being himself. How do you run away or say I’m done being myself? As artistes, we have no term of office or a set retirement age, this is who we are. It’s not an employment career, it’s our life.” — Oliver Mtukudzi.
“My 67th album is meant to share a message of introspecting and I’m hoping people learn a thing or two from it. It’s an album I wrote last year after I realised that the world keeps getting tangled up in ‘unnecessary’ problems. All because we are focused on competing and being better than the next person. In so doing we keep stepping on each other’s toes but that is not how God created us. God meant for us to complement each other, that’s why he didn’t duplicate talent.” — Oliver Mtukudzi.
“Culturally, you don’t get to sing a song when you have nothing to say. That’s how it is supposed to be. You lose the purpose of a song if it says nothing, you must have something to share with the people who are listening. A song is what you are talking about, adding instrumentation, is adding flavour.” — Oliver Mtukudzi.
Bongani Ndlovu