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I WAS not the only one who danced to the songs by the Bhundu Boys in a Harare bar in Glen Norah B last Sunday. The songs were filled with past memories, forcing you to dance as if you were back in the village again. Apart from the two pretty waitresses behind the bar counter, most of the men and the three women, including myself, danced.
Piri and I were in Glen Norah B looking for my cousin Lovemore’s daughter. She left the village to look for work a few months ago and has not been in touch with anyone back in the village for the past two or three months. We heard she worked in one of the bars in Glen Norah B. Piri checked every bar while I stayed in the car, listening to music by various artistes blaring out of the many bars at the shopping centre. They were playing Bob Nyabinde, Macheso, Fungisai, Jah Prayzah and others.

Whenever I come to Glen Norah B, in Harare, it feels like I am walking down memory lane. My sisters and I came to live here, after the battle at Chinyamungororo between the comrades and the Rhodesian forces around 1978, back in the village. Many people died. We have a heroes acre at Chinyamungororo today. At that time,  the liberation war was reaching its peak. We were no longer sleeping at home in case the villages got bombed. That was two years before independence.

My mother  and most women stayed in the village and cooked for the comrades. We came to live in Harare for the first time, sharing a two-bedroomed flat in Glen Norah B with our brother Charles and many other relatives who came and stayed for a few days or for weeks. The two and three-bedroomed flats in Glen Norah B were built by the Rhodesian government to carter for the needs of affluent  professional Africans like doctors, nurses, accountants, marketing people, insurance agents and others with degrees. Our place was small and crowded. We slept on the floor, the sofas and wherever there was space, even in the small kitchen where we could barely stretch our legs. Sometimes cockroaches nibbled at our faces.

In April 1980, independence came. The war was over. Bob Marley sang “Peace has come to Zimbabwe” at Rufaro Stadium. Prince Charles came to take the Union Jack home. We were free. President Mugabe was in power. We were in celebration mood, proud to be Zimbabwean. For the first time, African music was freely allowed on the radio waves.  Censorship was gone. We could listen and dance to anything traditional or Western. We listened and danced to the music of a free Zimbabwe.

We were experiencing new musical expressions we would not have seen or heard in the village. The music was modern and new. We discovered the songs of Oliver Mtukudzi, Thomas Mapfumo, Zexie Manatsa and the Green Arrows and Lovemore Majaivhana. Also the comedians, Safirio Madzikatire and Susan Chenjerai and others.

We were also hungry for Western music because it was full of love and romance. My brother Charles collected many vinyl records of country music, especially Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, John Denver and Neil Diamond. Whenever he was going out on a date, you would see him polishing his blue Corsair, playing Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers’ “Islands in the Stream.”

On Saturday morning, there was a competition among the guys in the flats. They showed off by playing the loudest Western music. Those  with big stereos opened their doors and windows so everyone could listen to their music. Others with car radios spent hours washing cars with music blaring out of their Alpha  Romeos, Datsun 120Ys, Datsun 1200s, Peugeot 504s, Renaults and Anglias.

Then the Bhundu Boys came on to the scene around 1982 with village inspired drumming and rhythmic  lyrics. They brought the village to the city for us. In the two-bedroomed flat, we listened and danced to the Bhundu Boys’ songs. We knew all the words.

Last Sunday, I was back in Glen Norah B, sitting in the car and remembering the past. Piri came back to say she  could not find our niece in all the bars. So we gave up the search and decided to go into a bar for a little while. We chose a bar that was playing music from the 1980s.
Good decent women do not just walk into a bar because most bars in Zimbabwe belong to men. A good man does not let his wife enter a bar. Allowing her to do so means any one of the men in the bar can chat  her  up or even say rude things to her. Some men cannot help leaving single women in a bar alone. They assume she is looking for a man. In most cases, she is. Gone are the days when women past child bearing like my grandmother Mbuya VaMandirowesa and many other village women were free to drink and dance alongside men. These days, first wives and  second wives or small houses must stay at home or go to church. The bar is not for them. I tend to be led to these places by Piri because she is not a wife or a small house. She often drags me to such places because she hopes to  meet a nice man waiting for her in a bar and then get married again one day. Wishful thinking. But one must live with hope.

The pretty waitresses stood behind the burglar bars erected around the  counter to protect them from the admiring hands of the bar patrons. There was one wider  space between the iron bars to allow the exchange of empty bottles with full ones. Apart from  Piri, the two pretty young waitresses, there was another  woman sitting on a stool near the bar, talking to a gray-haired man. The woman was big with a very huge bust,  wearing a yellow sleeveless dress, tight black leggings and red flat shoes. Her face was covered in make-up and she wore a straight blonde wig.

We sat on bar stools close to her and she told us that her name was Joyce and her totem was Chihera, the Eland. Since Piri and I are of the same totem, we became related.

The man next to Joyce  introduced himself as Musorochena, or Mr Whitehead because his hair was all white. He said his  wife was a Chihera so this meant we were his wives. We all laughed and conversation flowed, as it does in a bar.  Musorochena  offered us all beers. I opted for a soft drink and said the next round was on me.

Then, as we sat there, the Bhundu Boys song, “Hatisi tese” came on. We simply got on our feet and danced. Just like that. That song is beautiful but sad. Here are some of the lyrics:“ Zvamaenda kumusha. Muchinge masvikako kumusha. Monoudza mai na baba, Babamukuru neshamwari dzangu. Handichadanana na Chipo. Hatisi tese na Chipo. Pamunonodzoka, monouya nemhinduro,  mozondiudza zvavanotaura. Chipo ndaimuda, naiyewo aindida. Mbatya dzese akatora, vana vangu akatora, chandakatadza ndachishaya, handichaziva ndakanganwa.”

The Bhundu Boys sang this song around 1982, two years after independence. Translation will not do justice to this classic because the real meaning, feeling and rhythm of the song will be lost in translation. Still, let me try the English translation. It’s  something like this:  “When you go back to the village, tell my mother, my father, my uncle and my friends that Chipo and I have gone our separate ways. Bring me the response  from them when you return. I loved Chipo. She loved me too. She has taken my children with her and all her clothes. I do not know what I have done wrong. I have forgotten what it is that I have done wrong.”

When the song ended, we all sat down and reminisced about the glory days of the Bhundu Boys and how they infused poetry and oratory in song,  using the village jiti style, the guitar, marimba, hosho and drum. Their story-telling technique was authentic, beautiful and simply Zimbabwean.

In “Hatisi tese”, the Bhundu boys captured the sad voice of a man trying to cope with change brought by the economy, urbanisation, a woman’s new-found freedom, diseases and lack of support from family elders and friends. It was  the music of loss and alienation in an urban environment.

The Bhundu boys sympathised with the crisis of the village man who moved to the city only to find that all the village moral codes and ethics of hunhu or respect were slowly disappearing. Without the support of his elders, the man was unable to control his new lifestyle and manage relationships with women.

“Those boys should have stayed home and not gone to England because once they got there, vakadya mahumburger and played with the English women too much. They forgot where they came from and lost touch with the village,” one elderly man in a suit said.  Others said that was not true,  the boys did well by going overseas because they were celebrities. In England, Australia, Europe and other places, they did Zimbabwe proud. How many  Zimbabwean musicians  would have performed at Madonna’s concert  the  way, the Bhundu boys did?
Joyce and “our husband” Musorochena said we should all pause and listen to the song called Simbimbino. This way, we would be able to appreciate how the village experience had influenced and inspired the success of the Bhundu. The song began: “Amai chekekai kani, amai chekekai, kuchekeka ndochekeka mwanangu, ndibaba vako hona vakandicherera . . .” Simbimbino was a moral fable about a husband who magically turned his wife into a wild pig and set a trap for her. She fell in a pit and died. The man was later arrested,  tried in the king’s court and  found guilty of murder. The king ordered his death. Justice was done. Through song and dance, we all  learnt something about the evils of domestic violence in a village setting.

“So, in England, who would have understood that story told to us around the fire by our grandmothers many years ago?” Joyce asked everyone in the bar. Musorochena agreed and said, “It is true. In England, the Bhundu boys started to sing songs like “Come on let’s join hands”, “Happy Birthday” and “African woman.” They should have stayed with the Shona songs and stories. That is where their inspiration came from.”

The Bhundu boys borrowed their name, “bhundu” meaning bush from the comrades in the bush. They also sang about the war in “tsvimbodzemoto’’, rods of fire, reminding us of our historical past. Their music  was  an innovative composition,  liberating, unifying and celebratory. It was deeply rooted in our everyday life  experiences soon after independence. Each song, each beat and rhythm carried us from the village to the city and from the city back to the village again, showing the  changing  shift in  culture and identity. The songs  articulated the problems, offered advice to others and provided psychological relief  to the singer and to others in similar situations.
Apart from Rise Kagona, the band member who now lives in Scotland, the Bhundu boys succumbed to various illnesses and died over the years. It was a tragic loss of talent and creativity. But their songs live on, taking us back to the days when we used to dance traditional  village jiti rhythms under the full moon in the dry season, muchirimo.

Village  based rhythms played an integral role  in educating us and promoting our music culture before and after independence. During the liberation war, the comrades brought us new songs and dance rhythms from Mozambique and Tanzania. Around the night bases,  comrades gathered us together and taught us our history through song and dance. They changed  the Christian hymns into revolutionary liberation war songs.

Such musical lyrics involved communal participation and helped us to accept and support the war. Faraway in the forests of Zimbabwe, music and song became a tool for the formation and development of an  identity, helping us to retrieve, preserve and promote our traditional rhythms  as they were immersed in language, memory and dance. We felt a sense of unity and belonging at a  particular historical moment in our history.

Post independence, we still get inspiration and we dance to the old music of that era because it gives us  new ways to express ourselves through dance. At the same time, village-inspired lyrics create and negotiate a cultural dialogue based in our lived experiences,  even if it is done in a crowded bar  full of mostly men on a Sunday afternoon.

Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic. She holds a PhD in International Relations and works as a development consultant.