Zimbabwe through the lens of its music, song

THE hot, sticky days of the hot, wet season with the merciless sun up on high were quite oppressive. On such days, smoke could be seen rising from my father’s small fire, where he occasionally lit his tobacco pipe and sat down to enjoy the tobacco.

I could not help wishing that I too could have a pipe. There was something erudite about him speaking from the corner of his mouth in which he held the pipe.

When father was tired from tilling his finger millet, you could hear him chant, “This sun is slow to sink. Where I come from it would long be night by now.”

And sometimes he would shoot forth a lamentation about just how long the night was and also assert that where he came from, it would long have been past dawn.

As a child, I did not readily understand that he was probably hot and bothered as well as thirsty and even hungry according to what each day held.

In times like, this my mother usually turned up with a mug of mahewu or of the potent home brew people called “seven days”.

These many years later, whenever things are not quite going my way or I am a bit under the weather, I find myself aping my father’s chants. Perhaps out of nostalgia and perhaps due to some deep feeling of being adrift in a situation where time seems to stand still and nothing seems to come out right. One night I lay on my sick bed in a hospital in the UK, my wailing body racked with incessant pain. It felt like daybreak was never going to come. And just as sleep was beginning to overcome me, I was wrenched from dreamland by the restless fellow on the next bed. In a voice too loud for that time of night, he shouted, “Hey in there; I’d like us to talk.”

The time was about 3am, the witching hour. According to popular belief, this is the hour when the most mischief is done. I remember thinking that this kind of happening must have been what informed Pamhidze Benhura’s “Mbavha Nemuroyi,” song with a comic story that tells the adventures of a thief whose night-time visit at a homestead coincides with that of a witch.

Both are there for anti-social purposes. How each one reads the situation is what creates the drama. I had been admitted into hospital for surgery on my knee and was still sore all over. With no single sleeping posture available to me, I was never comfortable for any length of time.

Imagine then my horror when the meddlesome fellow from the next bed left his curtained cubicle to do the most unthinkable thing in mine. He eased himself into a sitting position on my painful knee.

I woke up with a start and before he could have counted from one to 10, I was telling him off with lots of ire and in no uncertain terms to do his shenanigans elsewhere. Inwardly, I was saying to myself, “Muroyi wehama! Dai kuri kwedu ndakuwashura kare (Evil fellow; you would even cause havoc in your own family. Where I come from you would be writhing on the floor by now). The words of our people never cease to amaze me, being so poetic and so epigrammatic.

They have the quality and import of unforgettable maxims. We reserve our most venomous distaste for anyone with no respect for family - one who goes so far as to lace the food of a sibling with poison. Such an act is always seen as the height of treachery. Without doubt, some of the best use of language is found in the lyrics of the songs that our people sing and listen to.

Each song is a veritable narration of life’s joys and woes, a commentary. Take for instance, “uMaGumede” by Dorothy Masuka. As small boys we sang out lustily, “Yethula uMaGumede umthwalo wakhe” (Give MaGumede some relief from her heavy burden) /Izolo bakubonile uhamba naye (People have seen you lots of times by her side). It was only much later that I understood what Aunt Dot Masuka was doing.

She was, in fact, addressing the rampant problem of pregnant girls being jilted by rascal boys once they were in the family way. The pregnancy in such a situation became a burden that could only be made less heavy if the young man owned up.

In some cases, inventive fans or even other musicians put words to the music of instrumentals. My favourite Spokes Mashiyane instrumental piece was the one in which Spokes played the alto saxophone with rare expertise.

We improvised words for the catchy tune and sang out loud, “Cheyameni geza makumbo,” again and again. That one line was more than enough for our purposes, but even now I am not sure why we were singing about the chairman’s legs needing a wash.