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| Oliver Mtukudzi |
The first interview was done by Kenyan journalist, Mufu Luvai, on June 13 2011
Oliver Mtukudzi: Journey through Time
With close to 50 albums in his name, Oliver
Mtukudzi or simply Tuku continues to be one of the most prolific artists in
Zimbabwe and indeed the entire continent. He has just added another feather- a
DVD and CD called Wonai (please watch)- to his cap and there is no doubt that
this is going to raise his profile across the continent.
Wonai is an enchanting audio-visual journey
through time and it is a must have for any African music lover. Initiated into
the world of professional music in 1977 when he joined the now legendary Wagon
Wheels which also featured Thomas Mapfumo another popular Zimbabwean crooner,
Mtukudzi has grown gradually into one of the continent’s music icons and like
good wine, he is getting better with time.
However, the musical bug had bitten him
earlier than 1977. Born and raised in Harare’s Highfield section, in 1952,
Mtukudzi grew up in a musical family. His parents both sang and actually met at
a competition of church choirs. They continued to sing and compete amongst
themselves (parents) and drew in the children as the judges.
Mtukudzi was, however, drawn to more than just judging. He was increasingly drawn to songwriting and had some early successes as a songwriter by penning some hymns that continue to be used in Zimbabwe churches to-date.
This musical environment sharpened his musical
mind and he brought all these qualities- zeal, desire to excel- in his
professional life. It also instilled in him the keenness to pick out the
goings-on, subtle issues and nuances in the community that formed the
storylines in his songs.
However, it is not just the parental competition
drew him to music. His father’s premature death propelled him (the eldest of
seven children) to the fore as the family bread winner. From this experience,
Mtukudzi developed a sense of social and economic responsibility early in life
and this has informed his artistic ventures as a musician, film star or
theatre.
“My lyrics have always been drawn from the
people and day to day issues not just the difficulties but the humor, the
happiness, the irony,” Mtukudzi said in an interview with Meron Tesfa Michael in
New York in 2003.
He added: “I may reflect more on those issues
that touch me in some way but my lyrics tend to highlight people’s values and I
guess I reinforce the more positive ones. I also like to challenge customs and
behaviour that encourage greed and selfishness and I am conscious of the
disparities in our society especially where women’s rights are concerned. As
far as Zimbabwe is concerned, we are living in a very divisive society right
now so these days I sing about the need for peace, unity and tolerance.”
This explains why his first single-
Dzandimomotera, which he did immediately he turned professional, was such a hit
that rapidly went gold. This was followed by Mtukudzi’s first album Ndipeiwo
Zano, which was also a smash hit. Some of the musicians from the Wagon Wheels
line-up teamed up with Mtukudzi to form the Black Spirits, the name of the band
that has performed with him throughout most of his career save for a two year
period towards the end of the eighties, when he performed with the Zig Zag
Band.
When Zimbabwe got her independence in 1980,
Mtukudzi and the Black Spirits released their fourth album Africa that was
regarded as one of the most important albums of its time. Two tracks Zimbabwe
and Madzongonyedze were outstanding and with it the fledgling country founded
one of its first great voices. From Independence to 1997, Mtukudzi released two
albums every year, establishing himself as a producer, an arranger, a prolific
song-writer and a formidable lead singer.
His prolificacy gave him an opportunity to
experiment with their traditional forms of the mbira, the popular Zimbabwean
music style called jiti, the traditional drumming patterns of his clan called
katekwe, the South African mbaqanga style, and he gradually absorbed them into
an art form which is now distinctly his own dubbed Tuku Music and with it, an
enviable niche in the industry.
“My fans were the first to describe my music
as Tuku Music but it was only around the mid-1990s that I began to develop it
as a brand name,” Mtukudzi noted in an interview. My music doesn’t really
qualify as one of the more classified styles of Zimbabwean music like jiti,
sungura, chimurenga or even traditional.”
He has not only tried his hand in music, he
was the lead character in the movies Jit and Neria that were major hits in
Zimbabwe and the rest of the continent. In Neria, serious drama dealing with
the thorny issue of women’s rights in a chauvinist world, Mtukudzi also wrote
and arranged the soundtrack that earned him the coveted M-Net Best Soundtrack
Award in 1992 against stiff competition that included that year’s other hit
Sarafina by Mbongeni Ngema.
From film, Tuku turned his attention to drama
by writing and directing the live musical production Was My Child, a project
highlighting the plight of Zimbabwe’s street children. For this accomplishment,
he was honoured by the Zimbabwe Writers’ Union.
This aside, he continued to concentrate on his
core business- music that took him beyond Zimbabwe. In October 1993, Mtukudzi
and group were invited to perform at the Natal Performing Arts Festival; in
February 1994 they conducted a six-week tour of Austria and Switzerland; and in
December 1994 performed ‘live’ on a double-bill with Lucky Dube in
Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, which they followed up with a number of
concerts in and around Cape Town the same year. He performed at the MASA
Festival in Abidjan in 1997.
It is around this time that he decided to take
control of every aspect of his career. He hired a consultant who helped him
with his contract, revamp his business strategies and firmly established the
Tuku Music brand. He invited his longtime friend and fellow artist Steve Dyer
to help produce his first album under this brand and it was aptly titled thus,
Tuku Music. It was a success that sort of re-launched him again to the world
and he has not looked back since then. He has continued to release one album
after the other and promoting around his brand around the world.
In 2000, he released Bvuma (Tolerance) his
39th album that created more than a few waves in the media when one of the
tracks- Wasakara, was adopted by the opposition parties in Zimbabwe in the same
way Gidi Gidi Maji Maji’s Unbwogable was picked by the then opposition in
Kenya.
This was followed by other releases like Vunze
Moto (Burning Ember), Shanda, a feature film documentary built around key songs
that Oliver selected as being turning points in his career, Tsivo (Revenge),
Bira Rekunze (The Other Side), Mtukudzi Collection 1985-1991, Mtukudzi
Collection 1991- 1997, Nhava among others. He has released several others
albums like Mahube- music from Southern Africa, Qubeka (Moving forward), with
Steve Dyer under their regional outfit called Mahube.
The journey has been long and tortuous but
very fulfilling and he has gone to almost every corner of the globe to take
this message that has endeared him to Zimbabwean and the African continent. The
journey is well captured in Wonai that will thrill. The 15 songs contained in
the compilation that was released by Sheer Music, has some rare footage that
presents Mtukudzi in different light.
For over 30 years he has touched our lives
through 60 albums produced; that is well over 600 songs telling tales of
Africa’s trials and triumphs. From the heart of Zimbabwe, Oliver Mtukudzi is
indeed one of Africa’s greatest musicians. His unique sound, popularly known as
Tuku music, is a blend of simple yet elaborate guitar melodies with
contemporary Shona and Ndebele rhythms – cultural yet modern.
Mufu
Luvai caught up with the legend for an exclusive interview for Crave (music).
Karibu
Kenya na karibu Nairobi.
Asante sana.
I
heard of Tongai Moyo’s death. Sorry for the loss. He was someone you mentored;
you produced some music with him.
Thank you. Yeah, he was somebody I discovered
and helped him find his way. I recorded his first album. I didn’t have money to
do it, but I fought hard to try, at least, to record because I believed in him.
For
how long did you work with him?
I think it was about a year or so.
Is
that a common tradition, are you mentoring any other artists in Zimbabwe?
A lot. I’ve been doing it from way back.
Tuku
music is something you created and is now what is recognized as Zimbabwean
music.
Yes, in fact I was the last person to know
that the music is Tuku music.
You’ve
done 60 albums that is well over 600 songs. Are you always composing?
I wouldn’t call it composing really; I am
telling stories.
Your
songs are mainly in Shona and some in Ndebele. That’s a lesson that cultural
music actually puts you on the world map.
It does. We are Africans and there are no
better Africans than Africans. And what makes an African? It’s our language. We
have beautiful languages and those languages make us African. If you go out
there and perform in your mother language you’ll definitely be different from
anybody else. Try it in English, you’re like them. If you notice, I use some
English because in Zimbabwe we have three main languages: English, Shona and
Ndebele. The English used to complain, “How come you don’t do it in our
language? We’re also Zimbabweans!” I said ok, I’ll give it a line, because it
broadens who we are in Zimbabwe. But for identity, it’s my mother language.
What
about the young artists in Zimbabwe, do they emulate that? Or is it like here?
We’ve got a number of Kenyan Americans.
That’s an African problem. It’s not only
Kenya; Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, Malawi and so on. Malawi is better off
because they are more into reggae than American stuff. It’s just sad that our
youngsters feel inferior. They feel, if they sing in their mother language,
it’s not there…
It’s
not cool…
it’s not cool, yes, that’s the right word. But
for my understanding, there’s nothing superior about that. There’s no culture
inferior to the other. We are just unique, we’re different. A lot of people out
there are looking for Kenyan music. Now, if Kenyans don’t play Kenyan music,
where would we get it from?
In
terms of logistics, how does the music environment compare to 30 years ago?
My first recording was done in a talk studio.
It was a four-channel; we’d record the whole set of drums in one channel; bass
guitar in another; all guitars – or if keyboard was there – in another and all
voices in the fourth. That’s how we started. From there we had eight-channel.
That was an improvement. As you know, development is very good, but the problem
in developing is that we always lose a certain quality. Those are the changes I
noticed in my music as I went on. Right now most sound is digital. We call it
development, but if you listen to analogue, what we used, and compare to
digital, there’s a lot that we’ve lost. With digital it’s easy to transfer and
give it to the next person, but analogue was tough. We used vinyl. Now there
are machines that can transfer vinyl to CD – but the moment it’s on CD, it is
digital and the quality won’t be the same.
Observing
the North African revolution, it’s so violent. We sub-Saharan Africans have
been lucky to have musicians who sing and reflect what the people feel. Fela
was all about that, remember the Zombie album. Hugh Masekela did “Everything
Must Change” for African leaders. I think, Tuku has done Wasakara. Or what was
Wasakara about?
Let me elaborate on what covers whatever I
sing about in all my music. My music is about self-discipline, because
self-discipline is the real life, it is common sense. Every song I’ve written
is to install common sense into every one of us because we ignore common sense.
With self-discipline we can achieve a lot. We can avoid wars, we can avoid
disputes because we are self-disciplined and my translation of self-discipline
is respect for the next person. In all forms of art, it is our responsibility
to heal and touch the next heart. It’s not about how much we get from it.
Some
of your music is about Aids. Kenyans love Todii. Were you affected by the
scourge at the time, perhaps a friend, an uncle or a relative?
I don’t think there is anybody who is not
affected by the deadly disease. We are all affected somehow. I wrote that song
when I had lost four members of my band in a space of two months, to the deadly
disease, including my own young brother. So during the time, we were fighting
the stigma attached to the disease, that’s when I wrote this song. It’s a song
full of questions, but no solutions. But it was designed to trigger discussions
amongst people so that people can talk about it and hopefully the stigma will
fall off. And I’m glad the song has served its purpose; in the whole of Africa
people want to know what I’m talking about. That makes it serve its purpose.
I’ve had the song being quoted by politicians and in churches.
Poverty
in Africa is like a disease. Of course, it can be helped. How do you do it in
Zimbabwe?
The cause of poverty in most cases is
attitude. It’s an attitude problem that builds to that situation. I did a play
about street kids. I said, “Hey, how can there be street kids? Streets don’t
develop children!” The parents are there somewhere somehow. There’s lack of
self-discipline somewhere that’s causing these kids to stray. And when I did my
survey I found that, yes there are orphaned kids, but there are also street
kids by design; parents send their children to the street to beg. There’s no
real street kid. There are a lot of organizations trying to deal with that,
trying to take them off the streets. I’m happy some of them have now grown up.
I’ve even played at a wedding of a guy who was a street kid and for me it’s a
good example.
What
other community projects are you involved in?
A lot. I deal with Aids, Cancer, Malaria,
Arts, and so on. I believe that some of these kids are in the streets because
they have nothing to do. I do have Pakare Paye Arts Centre, which is a place I
built to facilitate for people of all ages to do something creative. We even
have people in their 50’s. I did this after realizing that the problems I faced
when I started were still there today; problems of attitude from parents who
don’t respect who their children are. They impose their failures, what they
couldn’t afford or what they couldn’t do, on their children. They can go to
work and work hard to push their children into what they’re not.
Your
latest album is about your collaborations.
Yes.
There’s
Eric Wainaina. You also support Suzanna Owiyo a lot with her music, have you
done anything with her?
MO: I do. Yes, I have done something; it’s
coming on the next album. - www.cravemusicmag.com
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