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Blessings Chidakwa

Arts Reporter

Bollywood music has started making some inroads into Zimbabwe’s music industry, with the first of its kind concert named B-Town Fusion having been performed at Rep Theatre.

It is the Bollywood movies that are more popular in Zimbabwe and across the globe, but it seems as the music is slowly following suit, albeit in Zimbabwe.

The maiden B-Town concert, which marked the inroads of Bollywood music, was performed a few days ago in the capital city of Harare. Considering the Indian community in Zimbabwe, which has a long cordial history in the country, there is no doubt that Bollywood music will thrive.

The B-Town fusion concert was a clear testimony as it drew a bumper crowd fused with some old good music featuring artistes as Dhyaan Kumar, Varsha Patel, Denzel commonly known as Diesel, Dhyana Bhagat and Carlo music. Speaking of the B-Town Fusion idea Kumar, who was born and raised in Rusape, Manicaland province, said the concert, which was well received, was set to be expanded.

“This is the first one in Zimbabwe,” he said. “We do not have many Bollywood events here in Zimbabwe and artistes that come to Africa mainly to South Africa for performances.

“They never come to this side to perform, so it was a good initiative to promote local talent and also bring Bollywood to our country.”

Kumar, who rose to fame in Zimbabwe after featuring on a track using vernacular Shona language during sungura artiste Mark Ngwazi’s album launch last year, said the concert was motivated by passion. “Our passions are what inspired us and we love entertaining people so we as a team worked together to produce this musical concert and to showcase our talents in the industry,” he said.

“We have plans of doing bigger and better events in the near future provided we get good sponsorship. We will create magic and show people a different world to music.”

Kumar said the name B-Town fusion was derived from the concert where they brought Bollywood music and fused it with old school English music. “We also had a 16-year-old girl Dhyana who played drums for the first time on a big stage. It was one of the first big performances and she did absolutely well,” he said.

“We are glad that our red-carpet event was very well received as quite a lot of people came.

It was so encouraging and we felt inspired that we are inspiring the young generation.” Kumar said it was a good show which people enjoyed, including the performance by Carlo, who is one of the best lead guitarists in Zimbabwe.

“It was quite a good social event,” he said. “Basically, we can say a Bollywood concert has come to Zimbabwe.”