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Fred Zindi Music
In last Thursday’s “My Turn” column in The Herald, Tichaona Zindoga wrote about me. He describes me as “a professor in music or some such arts field”.I am a PhD holder in Educational Psychology from the University of London and I am a professor because I have written over 60 articles and book chapters in refereed international journals and books. I have also published 10 books some of which are based on my musical experiences.
I have a passion for the arts especially music as I started performing in a band with the late Jethro Shasha at the age of 10 and later with Louis Mhlanga and many others. During my studies, I took courses in music at the Royal School of Music in Piccadilly, London, and managed to get to grade five on piano and guitar. I currently teach music at the Zimbabwe College of Music.
Three members of Tocky Vybes’s band are in my class. I also teach post-graduate students at the University of Zimbabwe.
Zindoga accuses me of being gravely anachronistic because I do not live the age and the universe of today’s young people. People who write books on child psychology do so as a result of studying children’s behaviour. They do so in order to give an understanding of what causes such behaviour. They do not necessarily have to live the age of those children.
One of the courses I took at college was in guidance and counselling and I have played that role significantly over the last 20 years by counselling some old and young musicians who sought my advice and help.
Yes, Tocky Vybes is only 20. He could even be my son. Should a man over 50 years old who has experienced the ups and downs in the music industry not be responsible enough to share his experiences and give him advice because he does not live that age?
On the October 16, we held a Zi dancehall educative seminar at the Zimbabwe College of Music. The need to call for this seminar was necessitated by the potential of Zim dancehall being violently explosive in the near future. We had seen that in advance. Zim dancehall is characterised by provocative and revealing clothing among girls, scandalous dancing styles, drug abuse, crude lyrics and violence. We had seen the dangers of violence in Zim dancehall culture and our aim was to nip it in the bud.
Having listened to some negative and misogynistic lyrics which degrade women from some of these artistes such as Tally B’s “ Babe unoda zvinhu, ndiwe wakanzi nemaroja uri muti wemusango, hauna hunhu, uri nzira yeku toyazi, wese anenge achiti ndambobvako, usada kuzviita sister, wakachipa. Mai vemwana muri ve Bacossi” and Seh Calaz’s “Mboko Imboko”, we decided to discourage this kind of lyric writing by holding the seminar.
So Pastor Charles Charamba, Johnathan Banda, Robert Mukondiwa and I decided to put out this fire before it spread. A few Zim dancehall artistes who included Cello Culture, Terminator, Ricky Fire and Seh Calaz attended, but I was more impressed by the fact that the country’s promoters of Zim dancehall who included Partson “Chipaz” Chimbodza, Robert Zhuwao and Biggie Chinoperekwei were present at this seminar. These are the people who promote such music, mainly to make money out of these youngsters. The promoters, in particular Robert Zhuwao and Biggie Chinoperekwei, agreed with us regarding this need, although Chipaz did not say much during the seminar. Our wish was to try and educate the youngsters in Zim dancehall about the need for clean lyrics and to stop the culture of violence.
When I saw the Zim dancehall posters advertising “Sting Dancehall Clash” I could straight away see disaster. I even went to the venue on the Saturday to check out the situation. I saw the fence that had been put up in front of the stage and I realised straight away that even the promoter was expecting violence. I am sure when the fans also saw this fence, they must have thought that they were being invited for battle. The reason given for putting the artistes in a cage was to “protect” them from being pelted with beer cans. I left the venue before the war started.
When I saw the advertisement of Zim dancehall clash, I became unsettled as my mind flashed back to Sting in Kingston, Jamaica. I could more or less tell what was likely to happen. I was present at the first Sting in Jamaica which eclipsed Reggae Sunsplash when the young artistes had moved to ragga and disrespected the old guard of reggae music. Bunny Wailer was pelted with empty cans of Red Bull as these youngsters booed him off the stage. I was disgusted by this lack of respect for such a talented man, but never dreamt for a moment that this culture would come to Zimbabwe. That scenario still haunts me up to this day.
A dancehall clash is a musical competition where members from opposing dancehall groups pit their skills against each other. In Jamaica, dancehall clashes take place in a variety of venues, both indoors and outdoors. The object for each artiste is to beat or “kill” their competitors using aggressive lyrical content. This is what Chimbodza must have had in mind. The idea was copied from Jamaica but did not quite work out in Zimbabwe as a dancehall clash is a new concept.
In Jamaica, sound clashes with their “violently martial ethos” date back at least to the 1950s, when systems like Tom the Great Sebastian and Duke Reid’s Trojan clashed in the old Back-O-Wall neighbourhood of Kingston (now Tivoli Gardens). Sometimes these clashes were violent, with one system destroying the other system’s equipment. The first reported clash was between Tom the Great Sebastian and Count Nick in 1952.
Although I first came across sound clashes in the late 1970s during my student days in London, I dismissed this culture as totally uncivilised which, to me, had no artistic value at all. Why should artistes “bury” or kill” one another instead of doing collaborations? The promoters and youth in Zimbabwe have adopted this backward culture as part of their entertainment and have even taken it to a higher level where the throwing of empty beer cans by Zim dancehall fans on to the stage is encouraged and has become the norm. The artistes themselves have become merchants of hate as the promoter encourages “clashes” between them. First, it was Terminator versus Quonfuzed then Lady Squanda versus Soul Jah Love’s wife, Bounty Lisa.
Then there was the unfortunate incident where Chimbodza pitted Seh Calaz against Soul Jah Love, two artistes who already had beef against each other. Like two immature people the beef ended up being physical instead of being entertainment.
I would have thought that after winning the ZIMA award, “Chibaba Chacho Chakadya Nduru” as Soul Jah Love called himself, would have been more mature in his behaviour.
However, from my child psychology studies, I have discovered that as young adults approach independence from parents and achieve physical maturity, they become concerned about what kind of persons they are becoming. The ego takes a bigger role. The danger at this stage is role confusion and their perception of self might end up in role confusion if they are unable to establish stability. This is what Eric Erikson calls “Identity versus role confusion”.
In dancehall circles the ego plays a big part. It is all about outsmarting one another and with lack of maturity, it becomes personal.
The fans of each artiste will gang up against the fans of the other artiste ending in unnecessary feuds. This is what happened at Sting Dancehall Clash and the police didn’t know how to control that thus resulting in the chaos that followed. My advice to Chipaz and other Zim dancehall promoters is that next time they decide to hold a Zim dancehall show, let it be a “Peace Concert” where artistes are not caged and fans are educated not to throw beer cans on to the stage. This music is lucrative and will attract more fans if order is put in place. It has provided hundreds of ghetto youths with employment. We do not want to give the authorities an excuse to ban it.
Respect!
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