Vusumuzi Dube
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
“A PROPHET is without honour in his hometown.”
This illuminating bit of scripture, taken off the book of Isaiah, has applied to many a talented individual throughout history.
Familiarity breeds contempt, it is said, and sometimes opportunities can be found in places very far away from home. In Zimbabwe, Bulawayo in particular, this saying can be used to aptly describe musician, Vusa Mkhaya.
Mkhaya is arguably one of Zimbabwe’s most successful-ever artistes, being a member of Insingizi, an imbube trio that managed to pull off the unlikely feat of having a gold-selling album in the United States of America of all places.
Using his imbube background, Mkhaya has gone on to forge an equally impressive solo career, while also touring the world as a member of various ensembles. He has also been instrumental in opening doors for younger artistes, with collaborations that have changed the outlook of their careers.
Despite this, to some, Mkhaya might seem like a faraway fad, a myth that becomes a reality once in a while when one of his renditions or interpretations of popular songs or events goes viral on social media.
This September however, organisers of the Intwasa Festival koBulawayo have decided to give Bulawayo a taste of a voice that has graced some of the world’s elite stages.
If the proof is in the pudding, then Mkhaya should have long titillated the taste of music lovers, given his excellence over the years. In September Mkhaya is set to prove once and for all that he is more than mere legend, performing on an evening that has been dubbed the Vusa Mkhaya Experience at the National Art Gallery in Bulawayo.
For Mkhaya, who is based in Austria, the show will provide him with an ideal opportunity to reintroduce himself to Bulawayo audiences.
“The Vusa Mkhaya experience is a gig that will enable people coming to watch us to sample our catalogue of music from all the four albums that I have recorded as Vusa Mkhaya,” he told Sunday Life in an interview.
Usually in festivals, an artiste is allocated a 40- or 45-minute slot and that means they tend to just rush through songs because they know that there’s another act or three or more acts coming up. But on this particular night, it will be Vusa Mkhaya and no other acts.
“So, we will be performing all our songs without any rush. So, people will be able to experience us in the way that we perform when we do our own shows at venues like theatres where we tend to perform without that feeling of being rushed. Performing at a festival is different from performing at a theatre alone. At a theatre, you know that you can curate your own evening from the song down to the last without being rushed and so on. So that is what we will be doing at the art gallery that evening.”
In addition to his own performance, Mkhaya said he had lined up supporting guest acts that are bound to shock fans due to their star power.
“I will be bringing friends, surprise artistes that I cannot reveal now. It will be very interesting because people will get to witness and see acts that they did not think would appear doing so. We will be bringing acts that people would never imagine they would see performing live that evening.
“They will perform one or two songs with me on that night. I am talking about acts that people cannot think they would be coming to Bulawayo to perform with me so there’s a lot for people who love music to be excited about,” he said.
Intwasa director Raisedon Baya said they had decided to make Mkhaya a headline act for this year’s act after the realisation that he was not as celebrated as he should be, given his accolades.
“First and foremost, I think that at the moment Vusa Mkhaya is one of Bulawayo’s biggest artistes. He has been touring the world for a while now and I think as a city and a country, we have been sleeping on him as a star in his own right. We are not celebrating him as we should and we are not recognising him as we should. We even have some young musicians going to the point of even insulting him. We are saying he is our biggest act and he needs our support and that is what we are doing with this show which is in celebration of him,” he said.
Baya said that they also wanted local fans to have a first-hand experience of an artiste whose best-known exploits were usually on foreign stages.
“I think bringing him to the festival is not exactly recognising him because I feel that he does not need that from us but I think it is more in line with celebrating him. We want also want to give an opportunity to people that have always seen Mkhaya on tour or listened to his music a chance maybe to finally see him live and get a taste of the Vusa Mkhaya experience. Maybe it will be a chance for them to get to see what the hype is all about. We want to bring that close to home and say instead of saying, this is our guy, let’s bring him, experience and celebrate what he does. For us that is more important than anything else,” he said.
One of the organisers of the festival, Nkululeko Nkala said that the gig would serve as a chance to reintroduce Bulawayo to a world class performer that had been flying the country’s flag overseas for a long time.
“Vusa Mkhaya is internationally based but he is one of the few sons of Bulawayo but he is one of the few artistes that are lifting the Zimbabwean flag high. He is one of the artistes, with the like of Nite Freak, that are representing Zimbabwe out there and performing in some of the biggest platforms in the world.
So, a lot of people here at home, usually do not get to experience the art of musicians that play on these world stages.
“So, the whole idea was to bring the world stage to Bulawayo and as you know, Vusa is the kind of artiste that will invest in rehearsal and performance. We see this as an opportunity for fans and artistes alike to either learn or experience Vusa. Our theme for this year is ironically, imagine it, experience it, so it should perhaps maybe in a way speak to that. So, we are bringing those things that you can only imagine right to your doorstep. Beyond that, he is a man of the people and we are a people’s festival so the only thing we can do is give people what they want,” he said.
Bongani Ndlovu