Online Reporter
Liberty Dube
Entertainment Correspondent
IT is not every day that a sungura artiste sits down and pens a song so emotional, so piercing, that it continues to breathe long after the voice behind it has fallen silent.
Drug and substance abuse has become a menacing scourge – not only in Mutare – but across Zimbabwe. Recent studies show that an estimated 7.1 percent of young people now abuse drugs. The most common are cannabis, crystal meth, broncleer, skin-lightening concoctions, illicit homemade brews, and even body-enhancement products. Children as young as 10 are falling into this dangerous spiral, a tragedy shaking families in Manicaland and beyond.
It is worrying, and heartbreaking.
Musicians from Zim dancehall to gospel have raced to studios to produce songs warning against drug abuse. Their messages have helped, echoing through communities that desperately need reminders of what is at stake.
Yet today, another voice has joined the fight, the one that speaks from beyond the grave.
Tatenda Pinjisi, the gifted sungura musician whose fingers danced effortlessly across the strings of his lead guitar, died earlier this year at Sally Mugabe Hospital in Harare. He succumbed to injuries from a tragic accident near Norton.
The nation lost a rare talent, an artiste whose sound could stir both joy and sorrow in a single note.
Hardly a year had passed since he released Varidzi vebasa, his six-track album filled with powerful lyrics. He never lived to see it flourish.
The project held enough weight to shake the musical scene, with songs like Ropa, Vavakidzani, Tariro, Shungu and Mutoriro.
Mutoriro has now taken on a life of its own.
It is making rave airwaves from kombis, flows from bars, drifts across radios everywhere. Its sharp, unmistakable lead guitar cuts straight to the listener’s heart.
In this song, Pinjisi is a worried parent, pleading with children lost in the world of drugs. He fears that if they do not change, he will die and they will not even manage to buy him a coffin for a decent burial.
Whenever they get a few dollars, they rush to buy drugs, and he laments how their future is slowly crumbling. He does not sugar-coat anything, he tells them plainly that drugs will kill them.
And yet, the song is danceable.
Despite having been released last year, people are dancing to it, in bars, weddings and night gatherings. The song drifts into a faster more danceable beat as it flows. The message, however, sinks deep. It is beyond sungura. It is a sermon. A warning and father’s cry.
Last year, quashing rumours that he had abandoned music for the pulpit, Pinjisi simply said, “I never quit music. I am just a preacher and an evangelist.”
Mutoriro proves that. Even in melody, he preached.
And now, months after his death, Tatenda Pinjisi is still preaching perhaps louder than ever. With every spin of the track, his voice rises again, urging young people to choose life. The world may dance, but somewhere in the beat is the echo of a man who cared deeply for a generation losing itself.
And maybe that is the most emotional part that the message he feared would be ignored while he lived is the very message saving lives now that he is gone.
His last show in Mutare was at the popular watering hole Club Mandisa, two years ago, where he performed for three consecutive nights.
That was before Varidzi vebasa had even been officially released. Besides the crowd favourite Saina, the song Mutoriro stood out as one of his most powerful live performances. Had he known, perhaps he would have played it with an even deeper intensity. For now, his voice, though buried, refuses silence.
