The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
IT was hammer blow, an uppercut that sent the arts scene reeling for the rest of the year.
Legends cannot be mourned only on the day of their death or burial and Oliver Mtukudzi’s departure was a setback that led to a prolonged period of mourning for the arts.
The grief was understandable. How do the living explain to fans and followers that they will never here that trademark cough live again, that their ears will never again feast on metaphors and parables delivered in that trademark raspy voice.
Every time that voice booms from a speaker now, a Zimbabwean heart amongst the millions in the country breaks at the realisation that the giant of Zimbabwean music, the man for whom the term superstar seems to have been invented, is now truly gone.
Tuku’s death in January was an earth-shattering event, turning the country’s arts calendar upside down and dwarfing everything that came after.
Even the heartbreaking family drama that followed the giant’s fall could not take away the significance of the death of the first artiste to be declared a national hero in a free Zimbabwe.
2019 was the year that the giants fell. Only a few weeks after the passing of Tuku, another titan on the jazz music scene was to follow. There was wailing from Makokoba to Soweto as Dorothy “Aunty Dotty” Masuka passed away at the ripe old age of 83. After years in South Africa, Masuka was rightfully regarded as a legend in that country.
When news of her death filtered through, cameras and microphones ran to her “home” in South Africa. However, her roots in Zimbabwe were never forgotten and under the shade in Makokoba, old jazz lovers would have sat, their favourite brew in front of them, and remembered those good old days when a fresh faced Masuka had dazzled them at Stanley Hall. A giant had fallen and a part of township jazz’s history had gone with her into that grave at West Park Cemetery.
Music was not the only loser in the month of February. Zimbabwean literature lost perhaps its finest pen when Charles Mungoshi bowed out on 16 February.
Watching Mungoshi battle ill health over the last years had been a bitter pill to swallow for all that loved and cherished his work. “To poison a nation, poison its stories” Nigerian poet Ben Okri once wrote. When the generation of writers led by Mungoshi emerged before the country had won back its freedom, they came when the average Zimbabwean had spent their life drinking from the poisoned well of colonial literature. It had led to an identity crisis, which still persists to this day for some, which was perhaps exemplified by the character of Lucifer in Mungoshi’s classic novel, Waiting for the Rain.
It is with such memorable characters that Mungoshi started the work of drawing the poison away from the country’s stories, drop by drop, word by word.
The flurry of such high-profile deaths at the beginning of the year might have lulled some into believing that the worst was over, that tragedy and loss would end with the month of January.
However, just as 2019 was about to bow out, Bulawayo and Zimbabwe lost another giant. The death of the legendary Cool Crooner’s Timothy Sekane to some was another nail in the coffin of township jazz in Zimbabwe. This is, after all, the group that had inspired the likes of Oliver Mtukudzi to pick up a guitar, the group that had given a young Dorothy Masuka a lease of life when she was a young girl searching for a break in the mean streets of Makokoba.
For some, however, Sekane’s death was also a graphic illustration of the dire struggles that Zimbabwean artistes face in life and even in death. The fallen giant was, before the intervention of industry peers and well wishers, on his way to a pauper’s burial as his family struggled to lay him to rest.
The welfare of artistes, even in 2019 is still in the elephant in the room. When it is finally addressed, giants like Sekane might afford to go out with a bang not a whimper.
Giants sometimes are not only human and this is perhaps best exemplified by the Harare International Festival of the Arts (Hifa).
The absence of Hifa from the country’s arts calendar was perhaps the surest sign that, with the country’s economy trying to rebound, the arts were also bound to show some symptoms of illness. When Hifa catches a cold, other arts events also sneeze, and it was no surprise to see other high-profile gigs getting cancelled for the same reason that Hifa had been canned.
Miss Zimbabwe was the giant whose fall made the loudest noise, especially when Zimbabwe’s neighbour South Africa went on to provide the winner of the Miss Universe contest. With the Miss Tourism contest also cancelled, pageantry in Zimbabwe reached perhaps its lowest ebb in 2019.
When giants fall, others rise and in 2019 Zimbabwe the beginning of the rise of new titans began to emerge.
The Bulawayo Arts Awards cemented its position as perhaps the country’s most glamorous award ceremony. Creativity and industry can triumph over unnecessary glitz and glamour, the award ceremony seems to prove year in and year out.
Meanwhile, the Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo continued to punch above its weight as it managed to hold another edition despite a tight budget again in 2019.
In a year in which Jah Prayzah and Winky Dee did not release albums, other artistes proved that they can still carry the mettle and supply the industry with the necessary hits.
Alick Macheso’s show stopping performance on Ngaibake proved that, in a year in which many giants fell, he is one that might still have a big role to play on the country’s music scene.
