Singing The Walls
Down
Protest music may be dead in the West, but it's alive and well in
Zimbabwe, where the oppressed and the impoverished find hope and strength in the
songs of Thomas Mapfumo and Oliver Mtukudzi
By JEFF CHU | HARARE
PAUL CADENHEAD/PANOS for TIME PEOPLE POWER: "There's a lot of fear," Mapfumo says.
"The solution is to fight back"
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Join
the heaving hundreds singing along with Thomas Mapfumo and you will see, hear,
feel how music can be a liberating force. The whoops and cheers for the man they
call the Lion of Zimbabwe have broken the quiet of a balmy January night in
Mutare, a normally sleepy spread of jacaranda-shaded streets tucked amid the
granite outcrops of the country's lush Eastern Highlands. In Queen's Hall, the
revelers dance across a floor sticky with spilled lager, lost in the thump of
the drums, the brassy blare of the horns and the hypnotic spell of the lyrics.
Listen. What you hear isn't just Mapfumo's rasp through an amplifier. Mapfumo is
the amplifier. "He is the voice of the people," says Ephraim, a businessman.
Despite the police, who watch, arms folded, the onlookers sing — no,
shout — things they wouldn't dare say. The biggest singalong moment comes in
Marima Nzara, a lament about a man with a big mouth who chases all the workers
away. "You have lost the plot," everyone sings. "You have plowed hunger."
Mapfumo never names the big mouth, but everyone knows it's President Robert
Mugabe, who has led independent Zimbabwe for all of its 23 increasingly
miserable years. "I'm just trying to reach the people," Mapfumo says. The roars
that shake the packed hall suggest he's succeeding.
That same week, on
the opposite side of the country, Oliver Mtukudzi — Mapfumo's former bandmate
and the other giant of Zimbabwean music — is in Binga, a rural area on
Zimbabwe's western edge. Binga is as hot, parched and brown as Mutare is cool,
well-watered and green. Tuku, as he's known to friends and fans, settles down on
a dusty wooden bench with his guitar. All day, he has been clapping his big
hands, flapping his long arms, and high-stepping around the bare concrete floor
of a thatched rondavel-turned-makeshift studio — anything to fire up the choir
of aids orphans with whom he is recording a charity album. Unused to the rigor
and repetition of a recording session, especially in this infernal heat, the
children are wilting. It's time for a break — and it's Tuku's turn to sing.
A dozen kids cluster round, jostling for the best view of the fingers
that sprint across the strings. Then Tuku's voice, strong and clear with a hint
of gravel, silences the choristers as it launches into an improv medley: "What
you do in the dark can be known in a day/ What you do behind closed doors can be
known everywhere." "One, two, three, four child ... no go school, no food." And
from his 1998 hit
Todii, a question, originally about aids, but now so
relevant to all of the country's crises, whether political, economic, natural or
spiritual: "What shall we do?"
In Zimbabwe, the answer has always been
to make music. Traditionally, the
mbira (thumb piano) was used to
summon spirits for help. Music was also Zimbabwe's oral newspaper, and the sung
editorials often spurred action. In the '70s, when Ian Smith's whites-only
government ruled what was then Rhodesia, says Mapfumo, "music inspired
youngsters to fight that oppressive regime."
Zimbabwe is independent
now, he says, "but the struggle is not yet won." In a land where most trickles
of dissent are quickly dammed, Zimbabwe's two musical legends sing on and sing
out like floods. They have different styles — the brash Mapfumo is more head-on
political; Mtukudzi, the soft-spoken storyteller, prefers parables. But their
songs are variations on a common theme — building a great Zimbabwe.
While Mugabe jets around the world, these two musicians rebuke and
encourage the people back home. Protest songs may have largely died out in the
West after the Vietnam era. But in southern Africa, where music is more than
just a soundtrack to people's lives, they still matter. "When I sing, I am
raising the Zimbabwean flag," says Mtukudzi. If Mugabe, nature and circumstance
have brought the nation to its knees, then these patriots are singing "Stand
up!"
You have to wonder whether Mapfumo and Mtukudzi are experiencing
déjà vu. Both rose to prominence in the Harare township of Highfields in the
1970s, during the country's final push for freedom. "In those days, blacks
couldn't go into town after dark," recalls Charles Tavengwa, proprietor of the
Mushandira Pamwe Hotel, the legendary nightspot where both men played early in
their careers. "One of the only places they could come was the hotel." Mapfumo
and Mtukudzi did more than sing. "There was always a message to the music," says
Tavengwa. "They were singing for all Zimbabwe and rallying people together."
In 1977, Mtukudzi joined the
Wagon Wheels, a popular band that
also featured Mapfumo. But both soon broke away to find fame on their own.
Mapfumo was always the more militant. His song
Hokoya (Watch Out!) got
him sent to jail for three months in 1977, and
Pamuromo Chete ("It's
Just Talking," 1978), an upbeat reply to Smith's vow that Africans would never
rule, got blacks to join the independence battle. Mapfumo's music became so
identified with the chimurenga — Shona for "struggle" — that the style was
itself dubbed chimurenga. Two years later, as black Zimbabwe celebrated its
liberation, Tuku and his band, the
Black Spirits, hit the charts with
Africa, an album filled with driving dance beats and heady optimism about the
future.
For years, Zimbabwe did live up to its revolutionary promise. It
was southern Africa's land of milk and honey — and maize and tobacco and beef.
But drought and a botched land-reform program have decimated farming. Last week,
a government report named prominent members of the ruling ZANU-PF, including
Mugabe's sister and top officials, who had broken the "one man, one farm" rule
for the redistribution of white-owned commercial farms. Zimbabweans had known
this all along, but it was the first time the violations had been acknowledged
at the top. Amid the chaos, production of maize, the staple of the diet, has
plunged to 20% of 1999 levels. Inflation has officially soared to 200%; shoppers
say the real rate is much higher. Price controls have only made things worse. On
the black market, a loaf of bread goes for 10 times the official price — that
is, if you can find one. Bakeries use the ingredients to make
non-price-controlled products like rolls.
The opposition Movement for
Democratic Change should be leading the call for reform. And its members are,
when not in court — leader Morgan Tsvangirai is on trial for treason, for
allegedly plotting Mugabe's assassination — or jail. Indeed, it often seems as
if ZANU-PF's only effective policy has been the systematic emasculation of the
MDC. The repression means, as one Harare woman says, "we're all ZANU-PF on the
outside, MDC on the inside."
In Binga, where Tuku is working with the
orphans' choir, Zimbabwe's crises converge in one misery-ridden corner. City
folk consider it Hicksville and still say the locals are so backward that
they're born with two toes per foot. But they're suffering from worse things
than outsiders' disdain. The area's 500-plus orphans know why the choristers
wrote
Iwe AIDS: "You killed my father, you killed my mother ... I
remain all alone." Dry, cracked streambeds are evidence of the unbroken drought.
Some villagers are eating tree bark. More than 150,000 in the Matabeleland North
province rely on foreign food aid.
Here, as elsewhere, hardship is
linked to politics. In the 2000 parliamentary elections, the mdc swept all eight
seats in the province, its rural heartland. Last year, 61% of Matabeleland North
voters chose Tsvangirai over Mugabe for President. Suffrage isn't supposed to
bring suffering, but the people are still paying for their votes. "A family will
walk 60 km to get maize meal at the [regime-run] Grain Marketing Board," says an
aid worker. "They'll be told to come back the next day. When they do, it has all
been given to people." Which explains the oft-told joke: ZANU-PF has no
supporters, only beneficiaries.
Last week, Mugabe was in Paris at the
Franco-African summit, hobnobbing with other leaders and enjoying, thanks to his
hosts, the temporary suspension of his E.U. travel ban. Most Zimbabweans didn't
notice he was gone. Nor did they when he jetted off to Southeast Asia on
vacation or to Zambia for a meeting or to Libya to visit his friend Muammar
Gaddafi. People are busy with other worries, like what to feed the family. You
might only notice when Mugabe's convoy — jeeploads of soldiers and that shiny
black Mercedes — speeds by on its way to the airport. (It's illegal now to make
rude gestures as it goes by; apparently too many people were doing so and it got
on the presidential nerves.)
Mostly, though, he's cloistered behind the
high walls of his Harare compound. From there, Mugabe — once a hero, a man of
the people — fights. The media may make it seem as if the battle today were
racial, as if the President were lashing out primarily at the rich, land-owning
whites left over from the bad old days. It's not. While the atmosphere in
Zimbabwe is akin to what you might have found in apartheid-era South Africa —
another place where music, from impoverished townships like Soweto and
Alexandra, spurred the people on to action — the real fight here "is really
black vs. black," says a Zimbabwean M.P. "It's black people against a black
leader." "The old man makes his own people panic," says Job, a taxi driver.
(Names have been changed in order to protect the speakers.) "The day will come
when we say 'Enough is enough.'"
We thought we were liberated, but we
were not," Mapfumo says, two days after the Mutare show, over a stew-and-rice
dinner in the living room of his spacious Harare home. (Even stars can't always
get maize for sadza, the staple porridge.) Mapfumo, 57, whose waist-length
dreadlocks seem designed to defy his receding hairline, realized in the late
1980s that he might have to go back to battle. "Corruption was rampant," he
says. "Mugabe has taken the wrong direction." His reply:
Varombo
Kuvarombo (1988), released abroad in 1989 as
Corruption. He hasn't
let up, writing songs like
Zvatakabva Kuhondo (As we finish the battle,
1994) and
Ndiyani Waparadza Musha (Who has destroyed our home?, 1998).
State-run ZBC radio — the main source of news and entertainment — often
bans Mapfumo's songs. During the chimurenga, ZANU-PF ran a Mozambique-based
short-wave station that beamed into the country, a tactic that exiled
Zimbabweans
are using again. Now the regime is fighting back,
recruiting popular singers to make propaganda albums. But the artists who sign
on "are hated [for] glorifying a corrupt, brutal system," says a Harare music
critic. Thompson Tsodzo, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Education, Sport
and Culture, admits the strategies are futile. "The government can't control
music," he says. Artists like Mapfumo will be heard — on tapes copied until
they're frayed, on short-wave radio, in bars and beerhalls. "Ministers had
better listen," says Tsodzo. "Musicians are voicing what the people are saying."
Mapfumo's latest album,
Toi Toi, was released three weeks ago
in Zimbabwe. The sounds are familiar — melodic mbira, twangy guitars, Big Band
brass. The name comes from a type of protest music, but Mapfumo's manager,
Cuthbert Chiromo, says
Toi Toi is "more reflective, less political."
Not apolitical — this is Mapfumo, after all. The biggest buzz among the fans is
about the track Timothy. The song censures a fool who endangers children. The
President is often called T.I.M. — "That Idiot Mugabe." Coincidence? Ask the
music man himself, and he beams mischievously, saying only, "Great song!"
Detractors say it's easy for Mapfumo to criticize since he and his
family spend most of their time in the U.S. They moved in 2000 "for the
children," he says, echoing virtually every Zimbabwean parent who has emigrated.
He comes back every year to face the music and make more, and he says: "I would
die fighting for my freedom and my country." Some of his critics ask if he's
also willing to live — and suffer — with his countrymen.
You can quibble
about where Mapfumo should live, but the fight in Zimbabwe is about one people,
not one man. "The people can change the situation," he says. "They must choose
their destiny." It's not just a matter of taking up arms against Mugabe. Today,
"the nation is destroyed," says Mapfumo. Even after the President is gone, it's
going to take time — and a lot of hard work — to build it up again. That's why
the men and their music are important, says opposition M.P. Tafadzwa Musekiwa:
Mapfumo "sings about what we need to do now so we can achieve all that Tuku
says."
Maybe what Mapfumo suggests would happen sooner if Zimbabweans
took what Tuku says to heart. "Solving Zimbabwe's problems begins with us," says
Mtukudzi, 50. "We have to help ourselves first." For him, step one is to look
inward. What are Zimbabweans living and dying for? What really matters? Tuku's
reputation has been built on asking and answering such questions, through
parable and metaphor. Outsiders who don't have the social or political context —
or fluency in Shona or Ndebele — might not understand the references in his
songs. The words may even seem preachy. To Zimbabweans, though, it's the truth.
Mtukudzi refuses to decrypt his lyrics. "I'm happy for people to get
meaning from my songs," he says. It helps that there's usually consensus about
what he's singing. Take the hugely popular
Wasakara, from his 2000
album
Bvuma (Tolerance). To the beat of conga drums and the gentle
rattle of hosho shakers, Tuku presses an aged man to admit there are things he
can no longer do: "You are spent/ It is time to accept you are old." Most
Zimbabweans heard an allusion to the President, then 76. A crew member at a show
thought so too. He cast the spotlight on Mugabe's portrait during Wasakara and
earned a trip to jail.
After the release last year of Vhunze Moto
(Burning Ember), which shows Zimbabwe in flames on its cover, Mtukudzi was
questioned by the feared Central Intelligence Organisation, the secret police.
Even they couldn't get him to explain his lyrics. He said, "You speak Shona,
don't you?" Mtukudzi feels his songs don't need interpretation. "Everybody knows
right and wrong," he says. "Deep down, they know."
The Highfields-born
Mtukudzi's own morality and musicality were shaped by his Christian upbringing.
Over 25 years and more than 40 albums, he has developed his own style, a fusion
of his gospel roots and more traditionally Shona sounds and rhythms, called
Tuku Music. Asked if it still qualifies as gospel, he shoots back:
"What does gospel mean?" Good news. "Then it is gospel," he says.
Strange,
Isn't It?, from the 1988 album of the same name, seems his clearest
statement of intent. On this song, he calls a musician chipangamazano, a giver
of advice. "I want people to think about the right thing," he says, "whether
they sit in the seat of power or not."
"Tuku has this dream that if he
plugs them enough, he will be able to help restore fundamental values," says
Debbie Metcalfe, his manager. "He feels there's no moral fiber left." He's not
the only one who thinks that. Many Zimbabweans believe the country's problems
will not be solved until society, top to bottom, reforms. But where do values
and moral fiber come from? For Zimbabweans, there's one refrain — sometimes
phrased differently, but always the same: "We need God."
One of
Mtukudzi's best-known songs outside Zimbabwe is
Hear Me, Lord (1994), a
high-speed ride to heaven on a guitar riff. The rousing plea for divine
intervention was covered by American singer Bonnie Raitt. Perhaps better than
any other song in his catalog, its lyrics sum up how Zimbabweans, many devoutly
Christian like Tuku, feel today: "Help me Lord, I'm feeling low." "Zimbabwe
needs God," says Fungisai Zvakanapano, a rising gospel star. "That's where our
future is."
The future is definitely on Tuku's mind. "I hate songs that
only work for a particular period," Mtukudzi says. "A song has to work
yesterday, today and tomorrow." Which is why his recent albums have so many
songs about aids. More than 1.8 million Zimbabweans — a quarter of all adults —
are HIV positive. It's a personal issue; his circle of family and friends, like
almost all in Zimbabwe, has been hit hard. And the problem is not going away.
That's why he said yes when the NGO Ntengwe for Community Development asked him
to work with the Binga orphans on their recording, which will raise funds for a
trust benefiting them and their destitute communities. And that's why he has
written so much about aids, including Todii, a Tuku classic with its lilting
guitar lines and searching call-and-response, and the mournful Mabasa, which
asks, "Who will feed whom since the breadwinners are all dying?"
Mtukudzi is not dismissing Zimbabwe's shorter-term struggles. For
instance, last fall, he helped start the Music for Food Collective, whose
concerts help raise funds to address a very immediate need — hunger. "But these
troubles will come to an end. It's a phase," he says. His focus is based on his
belief that whatever phase Zimbabwe is in, it will always need core values —
self-discipline, respect for others, cultural pride, faith. The fans seem to
agree. "Eh, Tuku!" says Shamiso, a maid. "He knows our suffering." "Tuku sings
our reality," says Ebenezer, a waiter. "He sings what has happened and what
will."
Critics insist the reality might be different if Mtukudzi tackled
politics. "He's like everyone else — afraid," says one. He could exploit his
popularity to make a statement. "But at what price?" asks John Matinde, a DJ at
SW Radio Africa. "He could come out with a killer of an album — and spend the
rest of his life in jail." Tuku knows there's power in what he does and the way
he does it. "A musician is not a politician. He is there to entertain," he says.
"But a musician is also there to help. He is a leader trying to tell, to teach."
Jail would mean class is over.
What should Zimbabwe do, Tuku? What does
the land need? "We need rain!" he declares, with a grin that says "You're not
going to get me to talk about politics!" "We need to believe in who we are, to
regain respect for one another." Later, he offers a telling comment on the mood
of the people: "When water is boiling, it's bound to spill over."
In
this freedom fight, as in a similar one some two decades ago, music is applying
pressure. "To us, music is life," says Black Spirits bassist Never Mpofu. Songs
like Mapfumo's anthemic
Huni ("Do not play with the people, because the
people can revolt") and Mtukudzi's thoughtful Kucheneka ("Emulate those who are
brave, those who went before you") remind the powerful and the powerless of the
possibility of change. "The music is so important to the people," says Mapfumo.
"Let's just keep our fingers crossed that it will work."
Some people may
wonder why it hasn't already, but then the liberation war took years. "We are a
patient people," says Jacob, a clerk from Mutare. "Sometimes too patient."
"People are getting the messages through this music," says Chipo, a Bulawayo
student. "We know they are singing from the heart. In time, it will help us
stand up."
On Mtukudzi's last morning in Binga, the choir seems to be
stronger, more confident. They zip through a couple of songs, and Tuku raises
his arms to heaven, in triumph — or is it thanksgiving? But they soon tire.
Their voices crack. Their legs ache. Their new outfits — rich gold paired with a
chocolate-brown batik — make them itch.
Partway into Bonga Hlabelela, a
hopeful song written by the children that says, "Have faith in the Lord! Sing!
Sing!", Tuku waves the choir to a stop. He consults the choirmasters about a
note change, then turns back to the group. They start. And above their rapidly
building four-part harmony, you hear Tuku, spurring them on. "Open your mouths!
Louder! I want you to break these walls down!" It's a message all Zimbabwe needs
to hear.