Sundaymail Editor
Fred Zindi
HE is no more!
Rise, please rise again! Come and sing again!
It seems like when you sang the song with the lyrics below, you had predicted your own death:
“Hupenyu hwangu ndehwe kufara chete,
Parufu rwangu moridze ngoma,
Parufu rwangu moridze mbira.”
Yes, another tragedy has befallen us.
I received the shocking news of Rise Kagona’s death from Alice Purves, a Zimbabwean living in Edinburgh, Scotland, last month.
She was assisting Andy Cooke, Rise’s friend, to raise funds to send his body to Zimbabwe.
His funeral was held in Edinburgh last weekend.
His body was then flown back to Zimbabwe on Thursday and was laid to rest on Saturday.
Rise Kagona is one of the latest members and leader of the Bhundu Boys — a band that put Zimbabwe on the world map in the 1980s — to die.
Although there were five members at first, four of the Bhundu Boys are now dead.
These include Biggie Tembo, David Mankaba, Shakie Kangwena and Rise.
The surviving members include their original bass player Washington Kavhai, who was later replaced by Mankaba; Kenny Chitsvatsva, their drummer; and Kuda Matimba, who played keyboards.
These three attended Rise’s funeral in Scotland, which was conducted by Farai Elton Mjanana.
The band was responsible for churning out hits such as “Simbimbino”, “Babamunini Francis”, “Hatisi Tose” , “Kuroja Chete”, “Hupenyu Hwangu” and “Jit Jive”.
It is almost 40 years now since the band took the United Kingdom’s music scene by storm with their Jit Jive sound.
Rise Kagona was a founding member and an inspirational guitarist of the famous Bhundu Boys band.
He was born in Malawi on May 17, 1962 and came to Zimbabwe when he was two-years-old.
He formed the Bhundu Boys band at independence in April 1980 after recruiting four of the above-mentioned members (Biggie Tembo, David Mankaba, Shakie Kangwena and Washington Kavhai).
At independence, Rise began playing around the Harare townships, where he met local guitarist Biggie (Tembo), who would become the lead singer of the Bhundu Boys. Soon afterwards, he met drummer Kenny (Chitsvatsva).
The group performed in Zimbabwe’s townships and in beerhalls and at Club Saratoga in Highfield, Harare, when they were spotted by Steve Roskilly, who owned a recording studio in the capital.
With Roskilly, the Bhundu Boys had four number one hits within three years of coming together.
Biggie Tembo was the lead vocalist and the driving force behind the band.
The odd circumstance which brought the band international fame began in the mid-1980s at a squat in a disused hospital at Earl’s Court, London, where Owen Elias, a student at Chelsea College of Art, met Doug Veitch, a maverick Scottish guitarist whose supplementary sources of income included driving tube trains and cleaning windows.
Using the £2 000 then gifted to new businesses under the Enterprise Allowance Scheme of Britain, Owen and Doug formed a label, which they called Discafrique, and left for Harare to look for music artistes.
There, Roskilly played them the songs they issued on the EP that would captivate veteran BBC Radio DJs John Peel and Andy Kershaw.
It was when Elias and Veitch decided to take the band to the United Kingdom, in 1986, that things became increasingly surreal.
Unable to fund a tour, they turned to Gordon Muir, a designer of knitwear brochures who grew up with Veitch in the border town of Hawick, Scotland. Muir provided the cash and was soon sole manager of the band.
Muir got the band bookings on the lucrative student circuit, from which base, with the support of DJs such as Peel, Kershaw and Charlie Gillett, they built a national following.
Shaky start
The Bhundu Boys’ first performance in Britain was at the Africa Centre in London’s King Street, where Zimbabweans and other African nationals used to gather for social activities every weekend.
However, very few of the Africans in the diaspora had heard of them and also due to poor publicity, attendance at their first gig was very poor to such an extent that they could not afford bed and breakfast accommodation after the first night’s performance.
Although I was not part of the organising team of this outfit, I gave overnight accommodation at my flat to Rise, Kenny and David (Mankaba), as their manager Gordon Muir, who lived some 450 kilometres away in Scotland, which was an eight hours’ drive, found it too far to travel.
Biggie Tembo, who refused to spend the night in someone else’s house, is the only one who was accommodated at a nearby bed and breakfast place.
Fortunately, news of the Zimbabwean band’s arrival in the United Kingdom spread quickly.
Fame and fortune
Despite the previous disaster at the Africa Centre, subsequent shows were successful.
At the height of their fame in the mid-1980s, the Bhundu Boys were signed to Warners (WEA).
They toured North America, Australia and Hong Kong, chauffeured to venues from luxury hotels. They owned a large house in Kensal Rise, West London.
Gordon Muir, their manager, says the advances the five band members received, not including fees from their heavy tour schedule, totalled around £120 000.
The Bhundu Boys’ management team brought the band to prominence.
In 1987, the Bhundu Boys played at Wembley Arena, United Kingdom, as a support group for international star Madonna.
John Peel (former BBC Radio DJ) famously described the band as producing “the most naturally flowing music he’d ever heard in his life”.
Andy Kershaw was best man at Biggie Tembo’s wedding in Zimbabwe, where Zimbabwean artistes Oliver Mtukudzi and Newman Chipeni performed.
Due to some misunderstandings among band members, Biggie Tembo was eventually dismissed from the band.
Rise said that Biggie walked out on the band and had begun to act weird.
Not long afterwards, Muir adds, Biggie attacked him.
In career terms, Biggie had been promised the earth, had begun to achieve, then to have everything snatched away from him was just too much.
He ended up in a psychiatric hospital in Zimbabwe.
With Biggie out of the band, the Bhundu Boys’ fortunes waned.
The group’s prized asset had always been Biggie Tembo, a more complex man than his ever-smiling stage personality suggested, and his departure exacerbated a pattern of aberrant behaviour.
In 1990, the band, with Rise at the forefront, began a long period of further live appearances, releasing other independent CDs.
However, it started to fall apart.
They were dropped from WEA after the commercial failure of their second album on the label.
The band continued, but, without the writing and vocal talents of Biggie, never again got the same reception by the press or the public.
Although being the smallest and the shortest in the band, Rise was the band leader.
“I was the youngest and shortest band member,” Rise said.
“However, all the band members respected me because I had a temper. I was determined; back in those days, I didn’t talk much, I spoke with my fist.
“If you had a problem with me, I would ask you to step outside, and they knew not to.
“If you look at guys like Biggie (Tembo) and Kenny (Chitsvatsva), these guys were big, even interviewers would naturally gravitate towards them, assuming one of them was the band leader.
“That did not faze me because, to me, it was about the band, the team; as long as I could keep this band together, I was happy.”
After the split, Rise eventually settled at a farm in Edinburgh, Scotland, and formed another group, which he called the Jit Jive Band, but without Biggie, this band never rose to the dizzy heights of the Bhundu Boys.
Now he is gone!
We all travel through that beaten track. Our loss is immeasurable as Rise was an inspiration to all of us.
“Wagayeyiko mudiwa, usandisiye.”
May his dear soul rest in eternal peace.
Feedback: [email protected]
Online Reporter