Word for Jey’s Marabini, tribal hooligans

JEYS Marabini reportedly had a very bad day in the office at the inauguration of Emmerson Mnangagwa as president last week. And he is a distraught man. The southern crooner says he was the victim of pelting as people wished him off the stage rather than continue hearing him play.

Playing before non-paying crowds can be terribly tricky as they will not have necessarily come to hear your music nor will they be able to appreciate it and therefore your presence can only be met with approval out of luck or appreciation for your art or alternatively jeers.

But Jeys has a card in his pocket which reads “tribalism”. He alleges the people pelted him off because he was Ndebele and the crowd, over 50 000 of them, were tribalist and picked on him along tribal lines.

Truth is there is probably a fault line there that needs to be appreciated and accepted. There are several “isms” that exist in our polarised country; from racism, tribalism, sexism right down to ageism and so many ugly “isms” in between.

If there was a slur directed at Jeys for his tribal background then those people, in their moronic lack of understanding that this country now belongs to a lot of diverse stakeholders, have no place in this society whether amongst us the living, dead or undead.

Such heartless filthy ideology has no place in our great nation.

But there is a certain beauty now that Jeys has raised it, and it is the other side of the fault line which analyses whether this was all pelting in the name of tribalism.

And before I go forth I will make it categorically known that any pelting of artistes, whether they are wrong or right, is wrong and should be condemned and disapproved of.

But it isn’t all to do with not understanding a language is it now Jeys?

Mafikizolo, singing in similar variants of dialects as Ndebele had almost become part of the furniture in Zimbabwe as the crowds kept pouring into their shows in appreciation of their music.

In fact, they collaborated with Zimbabwean heartthrob Jah Prayzah on the back of that sustained love for their music especially in . . . wait for it . . . Harare!

Whenever they went back to our little garden, South Africa, they yearned to come back.

Sandra Ndebele was loved and adored in Harare after leaving Bulawayo where she alleged her art was not being richly rewarded despite her discography being largely Ndebele.

Lovemore Majaivana carried his enviable perm in the 80’s away from Bulawayo to find an appreciative nest in Harare where he was a hit with his Jobs Combination.

So too did the great old man of music Fanyana Dube, whose piercing sexy saxophone could see into the soul of the listener even though it was powered by the godly breath of an unseeing being in good ole’ Fanyana. They both sang in Ndebele. In modern day yet again, little multi-ethnic Zimbabweans are swirling their hips to Despacito in spite of the fact that they have no clue of what is being sung whatsoever. They probably never will.

Music. Good music. Is a universal language that no amount of bigotry can put down or fight.

So if a truth be explored dear Jeys, you just do not have any hits and you are continually trying to milk your name of its lustre to claim a place on the national stage from achievements in your past which are well past their sell-by date.

Music is like an artwork. You are only as good as your last masterpiece. You, Jeys, have since forgotten how to dream and write magical pieces of music and perhaps it was when their ears started to bleed from the monotony that the crowd started getting uneasy, no?

I carry no brief for the hooligans I might remind you yet again.

You are behaving like a 90-yearold woman who is past her prime who is seen finding fault when a young healthy 20-year-old beau passes you over and decides to swirl his loins in dance with a pretty post teen beautiful girl.

Trying to sell people your music, which you have not upgraded, from whose discography you haven’t created fresh hits, is therefore like trying to sell a dead cow to a buyer under the pretext that the cow is sleeping. “Kuvatengesera mombe yakafa uchiti yakakotsira.” Chances are sooner or later they will reject it and they will tell that something is amiss.

Chances are, if you didn’t give your family free copies of your music, they wouldn’t listen to you either. That’s a wake-up call right there!

Grab a biro Jeys. Fold your legs as mother taught us how. Grab a piece of paper. And get down to writing a hit. Or two. Or three! Only then will you guarantee that you remain relevant. And nobody will pelt you with anything other than underwear like the lasses used to do to the Beatles.

You were sharing the stage with Jah Prayzah for crying out loud and you wanted to keep singing old songs? Standing next to Jah Prayzah? He was looking like Michael Jackson and you, my dear mate, were looking like Tito Jackson. Just another guy with a guitar. Better yourself. And claim all the love you want. A man with good hits deserves a good response!

Abantu baqakathekisa ingoma ezilodumo.