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Seh Calaz

Fred Zindi Music
It is Thursday afternoon, January 1, 2015.
It is pouring with rain. I have planned this day to do my research on the future of Zim dancehall and no rain is going to stop me.I begin my study by randomly selecting youth aged between 15 and 25 on the streets of Mbare to hear about their attitude and New Year’s resolutions on Zim dancehall music in 2015.

The first youth I encounter is a pirated CD vendor at Mbare Musika. I ask him: “Do you have any Zim dancehall CD’s?” to  which he replies, “Plenty mudhara, plenty, which ones do you want?”

I ask him what his favourite Zim dancehall artiste is and he enthusiastically points to the CDs at the front of his pack before remarking, “Isu vekuMbare tiri mabhanditi, we support Seh Calaz”.

I go on to ask seven other youths the same questions on who their favourite artiste is and they give me the same Mabhanditi, Seh Calaz  chorus.

I ask, “How about Tocky Vibes?” One of them is quick to respond; “Who is Tocky Vibes? We here do not recognise him. His music is boring.

He only sings sad tunes and you can’t dance to them. When we have had a bottle or two of bronco, we really like to dance to tunes like “Tasangana Zvidhakwa” by Shinsoman, not Tocky Vibes.  Maybe the ghetto youths of Rugare appreciate him. We don’t.”

“How about Soul Jah Love?” I continue to ask. “Haaaaaa elder, you are now asking silly questions! Soul Jah Love died long ago as far as we are concerned. Did you hear his collaboration with Sulu? He is now singing “Chibaba-baba chenyu chi chinobva kuBudiriro.” What’s that?”  Another one comes in with, “We pelted him with beer cans at the Zim Dancehall shutdown. That was kind. This time if he goes on stage again, it will be bottles, not cans. He is one artiste we are against here in Mbare.”

However, that is not true. As I move to Zata Street, I bump into three Soul Jah Love supporters who are kind enough to tell me that there is strong rivalry between Seh Calaz and Soul Jah Love and that there are two rival groups in Mbare who are supporters of each of these artistes.

One Joel Mafuta remarks: “ The dispute between these two singers  is over a girlfriend and it will never end.” He refuses to tell me who the girlfriend is.

I say to them,” But there are several other Zim dancehall musicians in Mbare besides these two, are you telling me that only these two matter?”

One dreadlocked Zim dancehall fan among the three says to me, “Elder, these gangs only group around Soul Jah Love and Seh Calaz. The rest of these artistes such as Terminator, Ricky Fire, Killer T don’t matter. No one bothers with them”.

One elderly gentlemen who is passing by recognises me and stops to listen, then interjects, “Hey Fred , what are you doing in Mbare?

Vafana ava maboorangoma. I was  listening to you guys speaking. It’s all about mbanje, sex and violence here. These boys have lost direction. Gone are the days when we used to sing Bob Marley’s songs such as” (And he begins to sing):

“Buffalo Soldier, Dreadlock Rasta
There Was a Buffalo Soldier
In the heart of America
Stolen from Africa, brought` to America
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival
If you know your history
Then You Would Know Where you coming from
I’m just a Buffalo Soldier
In the heart of America
Stolen from Africa, brought` to America

“Bring back those good old days of Rasta peace, love and harmony and the fights among these youths will stop”, he concludes.
Perhaps not, as the Zim dancehall youths have imported the Jamaican culture which includes misogyny, homophobia and violence wholesale.  These Mbare youngsters who support Calaz are even calling themselves “mabhanditi”, a word that is also found in the ghettos of Kingston, Jamaica where supporters of artistes like Mavado call themselves “the bandits”.

I begin to wonder whether the Zim dancehall fights will ever stop.

Zim dancehall music is a copy of music which emerged in the violent conditions of the political geography of Kingston. These violent conditions are to some extent reflected and reproduced in this music. Some of the lyrical content is positive, while some is negative, which deconstructs and attracts criticism occasionally. Therefore, abundant daily violence that dancehall expresses should not be (exclusively) understood as an endogenous activity or because of irresponsible artistes, contrary to the image conveyed by predominantly Zimbabwean press and the international media. Not that the “people of the ghetto” (a term which is used for people who live in suburbs like Mbare, Mufakose, Rugare, Mabvuku or Chitungwiza)  share some “common tendency” to violent problem solving. These are the social and economic conditions of poverty and desperate alienation fueling a crime home and which generalise the use of force and arbitrary justice.

Zim dancehall has brought out the rivalry between these different ghettos as each one tries to ‘big up’ its own artiste. In this pre-structured social space, transcultural violent tendencies  found fertile ground to perpetuate and reproduce these violent behaviours.

Going against essentialist  arguments on the liability of  perpetrators of violence, this analysis will detect internal and external factors that contribute to identity construction complex “bad boy” (rude boy) or more recently the “Gangsta for life”, a term which paraphrases Mavado’s latest fashion statement.

Dancehall artistes should be united instead of forming rivalry based on which ghetto they come from if the music is to move forward.
At the moment, music promoters are smiling and taking advantage of this rivalry as evidenced by the recent “Sting” concert where some artistes had to beg the promoter to perform on stage.

The promoter would only tell them to go on stage for no pay as he was aware of the desperation exhibited by these artistes. The fans do not know what is going on backstage as they await to see the act from their neighbourhood appear on stage. I was looking at one promoter’s budget in which 10 artistes were paid a total of  $1 500. That is peanuts!

I hope that the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe will organize a seminar which will include both artistes and fans in order to nip this social problem in the bud.

It will determine the positions and social roles of Zim dancehall artistes who produce this “popular culture”. This involves the dissection of social relations between systems of thought, social institutions, and various forms of material and symbolic power.

As things stand at the moment, it looks like Zim dancehall is determined to repeat the same mistakes it made last year. Artistes are determined to outdo each other (kuwachisa) and the fans behind the individual artistes are determined to continue with their violence against the artistes they do not like. This cultural explosion is negative.

Word of advice:

Zim dancehall artistes should be taught to be more positive towards their fans, their music and the press. This should be their new year’s resolution.

Tocky Vibes needs it more. Playing in front of 350 000 fans at Magaya’s church does not mean that he is big. The crowd followed Magaya’s teachings.  He is on record as someone who rebuffs journalists when approached. His response is often “Talk to my manager, Elvis Bokosha.”  Bokosha is not the journalist’s manager.

The journalist wants to hear intimate details about Tocky Vibes from Tocky himself. If it so important that the manager has to be consulted about anyone who wants to talk to Tocky Vibes and if I were Tocky Vibes, I would simply say, “Let me talk to my manager first to see if it is okay to talk to you, then I will come back to you.”

That is more positive than asking everyone to talk to Bokosha instead.

Tocky tries to blame everyone for his poor performances at times. For instance at the Mafikizolo show on December 19, 2014, he, without any evidence at all, blamed sound engineers for the poor sound quality during his performance.

Tocky is lucky to have three members in his band, Victor Sigauke, Geoffrey  Ndeka and Terence Kwenda, who have done courses in sound engineering and music technology at the Zimbabwe College of Music. When he does his sound check before the show, he should ask these guys to save the sound levels he finds satisfactory and ensure that his own sound engineer sticks to these levels on the mixing desk during his performance, but he leaves this to anybody and later blames them for sabotage.

He should also get rid of some of his bodyguards such as Baba aNgoni who is notorious for harassing fans at his concerts. Looks like this young man still has a lot to learn from the music business.

To Tocky Vibes, I say, let’s look for more positive vibes in 2015.  A Happy New Year to you all.
 
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