Critics, reviewers of  arts must up their game Alick Macheso
 Alick Macheso

Alick Macheso

David Mungoshi Shelling the Nuts
During the Miss World Zimbabwe pageant held in Harare recently, Alick Macheso and Ringo Madlingozi gave the lie to the belief by uninformed critics and reviewers that what they consider to be old school music in Zimbabwe is necessarily dead because other genres have emerged in the last decade or so.

There is also the belief among some that new is necessarily better. The truth is actually something quite different and perhaps more of an eclectic mix of sounds and preferences. It is a fallacy to think that excellence in one musical genre necessarily kills other genres.

There is room enough at the top for other genres. If this were not so, there would no longer be any jazz or blues in the world. Even good old rock and roll! In most parts of the world, artistes co-exist and excel in their own particular field; and each one has his or her own captive audience and life goes on.

Collaborations are even possible across the genres. One of the greatest tunes in the world, “My Way” was penned and arranged for Frank Sinatra by Syrian-Canadian artiste Paul Anka, who was more into ballads than into Sinatra’s swing music.

Some of the fault for the cut-throat posturing must go to all Zimbabweans, but in particular to those of us who interact with the public through the country’s media. The words that we use can make or break anything.

For that reason, fair play must come into focus; to make that happen, we must all work on the basis of sound ethics.

As I said in a previous article, for example, the MC at the Miss World Zimbabwe pageant should not have been allowed anywhere near that microphone on this special day. She was a spoiler we could have done without.

She kept making the kind of remarks that not-so conscious disc jockeys make too often on radio and television. These people attach killer labels to works of art and sharpen appetites for foreign artistic cuisine.

The often used word “local”, when used in this sense and context has a classificatory and derogatory effect that demeans the product or creation.

In not so many words ,their remarks tell you that it’s alright if you go out and smoke when something local is playing. As a result, people begin to attach the local label to everything home-grown.

The opposite of that is that people start giving undue importance and attention to anything from outside our borders. Such developments have in the past led to some very strange behaviour in our market place.

I remember the good old days of Bulawayo’s Consolidated Textiles. The factory manufactured some very fine blankets popularly-known as puma blankets and exported the lot to Botswana and elsewhere.

Across the border in Botswana, we needed no foreign currency during cross-border shopping. The Zimbabwean dollar was stronger than the rand, the pula and even the United States dollar. We bought digital watches and the invaluable puma blankets from Botswana.

Those were the days of stories about parties of mapositori crossing the border from Botswana in fake funeral processions that were a cover-up for their smuggling syndicates. They were said to bring in coffins full of digital watches and other goodies. Whether this was true or not is something else.

The interesting thing is that we went into Botswana to buy back our own manufactured products. What more, we believed then that we were bringing in genuine imports. I came across a similar situation in West Africa, not so very long ago.

Ghana is a shoe-manufacturing country and exports some of the shoes to neighbouring Togo. Lomé, the capital city of the Republic of Togo, is a free port and things are therefore duty-free there.

So Ghanaians go to Lomé to buy Ghanaian shoes at competitive prices there. They then return to Accra and other cities and towns of Ghana where they make a killing. Ghanaian cross-border traders sell their wares at prices much lower than the prevailing ones in their country and make considerable profits from the heightened sales.

Ringo Madlingozi

Ringo Madlingozi

At the beauty pageant, both Macheso and Madlingozi were in their element and gave polished performances that were absolutely vintage. If anyone had thought sungura was not for the big stage, they were disabused of their misconception.

Sungura is now proudly Zimbabwean, even though it might have had a somewhat mixed parentage at Independence in 1980 and thereafter.

You should have seen how quite a few in the sophisticated audience sang along to Macheso’s songs (just as they did to Ringo’s) and enthusiastically did the popular “zora butter” dance. As for the suave Madlingozi, the swag is still very much in evidence and he is still very much Mr Romance.

One can understand why musicians like Trevor Dongo with his R&B songs generate a lot of enthusiasm despite Zimdancehall being en vogue. What a voice and what melodies!

The combination of Macheso and Madlingozi demonstrates the welcome fact of how there is room for everyone in the mix of the art world. There is really no need to compare performers from different musical genres or to trivialise one genre while giving kudos to another genre.

Every genre has its enthusiasts; and of course there are many whose musical tastes are wide and varied. Each one is a maestro in his or her own right, and does not require any flake from anyone on this.

When Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, the American jazz trumpeter with the gravelly voice was talking about his antics and expertise on the trumpet he said, “Ain’t nobody played nothing like it since. Can’t nobody play nothing like it now.”

He was talking in a world where you had Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley. The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra and many others. Yet he wasn’t crowded out at all.

In fact, as far back as the early 1980s, Satchmo was still producing hit songs. “What a Wonderful World” is a hit to this day. So one wonders why some critics and/or reviewers in Zimbabwe try so hard to stifle the people’s creativity by always implying that sungura, for example, has lost its gloss and influence.

There is absolutely no reason for all that. Any good musician will have his or her captive audience. Indeed, some places in town do different types of music on set days during the course of any week. Having said this, we have to state here and now that the various musical genres in the country have their followers and that no one need starve.

The thing for the musician to do is to be as good as they can in their chosen area of interest and expertise. You also need to be very professional in everything you do. This also applies to critics and reviewers.

This other thing must stop. I mean this tendency by reviewers of music to claim that they have reviewed a song when all that they have done is to repeat the story of the song as expressed in the lyrics.

They tell people things that they can pick out for themselves. Given that in most cases the lyrics are in a Zimbabwean language, most people understand what a singer is saying without any trouble at all. They do not need anyone to repeat what the song is saying.

Most critics in Zimbabwe are unable to show convincingly what, musically is achieved in a new album by a popular artiste. But even where the lyrics are concerned, some ingenuity is required if an artiste is to make progress in his chosen occupation.

Soul Jah Love’s anthem-like song “Pamamonya Ipapo” has a very profound message that resonates with a lot of people.

In the beginning, I regarded the song as one of those half-baked Zimdancehall songs. That was before someone explained to me what Saul Jah Love was actually saying.

The song by “Mwana waSithembeni” (Sithembeni’s son) is, in fact, a eulogy to his mother and also a deep lament that his beloved mother cannot see how her son has come up in the world.

The woes experienced in music are also rampant in the literary arts of Zimbabwe. What we need is a vibrant body or association of literary critics, people who can read and actually do so whenever there is a new publication.

This group of fundis must be well-versed in the arts they assess. We should be able to assume that they have the necessary expertise.A book can live or die as they wish. For this reason, the critic must be a professional person with no hidden agendas. His business is to expose the book to wider patronage and assessment in the reading population. He or she must be able to use literary tools of analysis to advantage.

  •  David Mungoshi is a writer, social commentator, retired teacher and editor

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