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The musician’s four-year-old song Mambo, off his 2007 album Ndada Ndada Ndada (Heart of the Rhythm), is receiving unprecedented airplay on all four local radio stations.
Dhongi could be headed for a record-breaking airplay for any one song within a short period of time as one cannot miss the song on any particular slot during the day.

Luckily for the musician, the airplay translates to cash, as the Zimbabwe Music Rights Association (Zimura) keeps records of the times any one song is played and pay the artiste accordingly.
The last time Zimura disbursed the money to musicians, which was in June last year, the association was paying US$5 to musicians every time a song is played.

According to Zimura director Polisile Ncube, the amount varies with each disbursement, which means it could either be higher or lower when musicians get their monies in June this year.
Ncube confirmed that Dhongi’s song was not being used as a jingle but being treated as a real song and that ZBC had also confirmed that they are treating it as such.
“We wrote to ZBC about the issue when we realised that Steve’s song was getting too much airplay. ZBC then wrote back saying the song was being treated like any other song, which meant that they are logging it,” said Ncube.

Investigations by this reporter revealed that Makoni’s song is played not less than 10 times on each of the four radio stations daily.

Using a modest 10 times per radio station, times the US$5 which was paid to artistes last June, Makoni could be looking at getting himself a windfall this winter.Makoni’s weekly earnings could be in the range of US$1 400, a figure many artistes who have new material on the market would struggle to achieve. According to records at Zimura, other artistes whose music is doing well include sungura maestro Alick Macheso,Suluman Chimbetu and Chess Skhuza, to mention just a few.

Makoni’s fortunes seem to have also spilled into shops as his record company Metro Studios battles to supply the market with the album which people never really knew about until recently. Makoni himself is equally baffled with his recent good fortune but says he always knew that it was a good song that had come in at a wrong time.
“I knew the song was good and had potential to be even more popular given a fair amount of airplay, but as an artiste one cannot judge their own music,” said Makoni.

However, he says when he realised his new-found fame he quickly approached Zimura and he is happy that at least he is going to benefit from the airplay.
He says his inspiration for the song came from the realisation that Zimbabweans were disregarding their culture when choosing and installing traditional chiefs, positions of leadership that should be considered sacred.-The Sunday Mail