The different faces of Tuku . . . reflections on Oliver Mtukudzi’s 66th birthday

year as a full time journalist and I was in search of a story.

It was also my first time seeing Oliver Mtukudzi on stage and it’s a near religious experience. With only his guitar and Sam Mataure on drums, Tuku was mesmerising on stage.

The enthusiasm with which he jumped and skipped around on stage make it seem unbelievable that he is in his 60s. Perhaps that guitar was a time machine, transporting him back to his youth whenever he was on stage. For over an hour, he held his audiences within the grip of a strong spell, only loosening that grip in the brief intervals between songs.

When he was done I couldn’t clap and rejoice like audience members who seemed equally elated and relieved that they’ve finally escaped this wizard’s web. My job has only just begun.

Alongside Star FM’s Langelihle Ndlovu, we headed backstage where we found Tuku and Sam Mataure. After firing the first few questions, it became clear that the dream interview that I had envisaged was not about to happen.

Tuku was constantly on his toes, ready to evade any questions and fire back with volleys of his own. He and Mataure were an effective tag team, making sure that I hardly got anything of any substance.

In the end, the Star FM presenter asked Tuku to sing a song and suddenly the Tuku I had expected, the delightful energetic man always with a smile sketched on his face, was back.

He broke into a song and for less than a minute and the man that I had seen on stage, the man I had seen on that Olivine commercial all those years ago, was suddenly alive once again in front of me.

The hostile man barking one word answers into my recorder was buried, albeit temporarily. But as soon as his acapella chorus lapsed, he was back, abruptly calling time on the interview and leaving in a huff. Needless to say I left feeling like Tuku was not the man that I wished he was.

Tuku’s hostility, in sharp contrast to the joyful bursts of music that we had seen him exhibit earlier on stage, were maybe due to the circumstances under which the interview happened.

That interview came hot on the heels of the explosive book, Tuku Backstage by his former publicist Shepherd Mutamba. The book had set about destroying the myth that was Oliver Mtukudzi.

Mutamba had been Tuku’s lieutenant for many years and felt that his commander fell far short of the angel that his music portrayed.

“He’s not as good as he says he is,” the pages in Mutamba’s book seemed to cry.

When I left the City Hall that night, a sorry interview safe in my pocket, I became a believer in Mutamba’s version of events. Perhaps the Tuku I knew, that slender man leading youngsters in song on improvised instruments on that Olivine commercial, did not exist.