The tribulations of Afro jazz sensation Pronix : Depressed & alcoholic, double hit and run victim!

Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
A FEW years ago, Prosper “Pronix” Ndebele was one of the most promising voices in Bulawayo, with his band, Pronix and the Harmonic Rhythms, leading an afro jazz revolution that was bringing soulful music back to the city’s mainstream stages.

Through the efforts of Pronix and his associates, it was now clear that jazz was no longer an old man’s game.

They were young, vibrant, soulful and had swagger to boot.

The world seemed to be at their feet and Pronix, then a chubby crooner capable of singing his way into the heart of any audience, was the leader of this new school.

However, in the intervening years, while the movement grew, with live bands becoming a permanent feature in most city nightspots, Pronix seemed to shrink and disappear from the limelight.

Pronix had lost it, the rumour mill said, and instead of a microphone, now his favourite accessory was a bottle of beer.

The cheerful and chubby young man had been replaced by a hollowed-out alcoholic that was a shadow of his former soulful self.

Where had it gone wrong for one of the city gifted singers?

“The issue initially was that I got signed to a label in Harare and then when I was working with that label, the problem was that I wasn’t able to make money like I used to because I wasn’t doing shows,” he told Sunday Life in an interview.

“Meanwhile, everything that we were doing, from music shoots and videos, it was all money coming from my pocket.

Eventually we went to Malawi and we were doing shows there but I never got a cent from gigs and I decided to come back to Bulawayo when our time in Malawi ended.

“I had a shop in Bulawayo but when I came back there was nothing there because when I was away with those guys, I kept on telling the boy that I had left manning the shop to keep sending me money because I believed that those guys would pay me back, but that never happened.

When I came back to Bulawayo, I then took some money from my savings again and went to South Africa to go and restock.”

However, while in South Africa, things did not go according to script for Pronix and when he came back to Bulawayo, another songbird had nestled with his Harmonic Rhythms, now Band Fusion.

“When I got there, things didn’t work out planned and I ended up staying there for months.

I tried to look for shows but shows in South Africa do not pay if you don’t have a name.

The money is very little and it does not matter where you come from, you have to start from the ground.

So, I came back to Bulawayo, but I had given P Jay my spot in my band but for me to come back and say young man I’m back and I want my spot was difficult because he had settled in and was doing very well.

That’s as far as I can say about that situation,” he said.

What followed was the toughest period of the singer’s life, as he plunged into a long episode of depression, battling heartbreak after the end of a long-term relationship. As his personal demons tormented him, his dependency on alcohol increased.

“There were personal things that happened in my life, I got depressed and addicted to alcohol.

I couldn’t just sit for even a little while without drinking.

From the moment I woke up I would start drinking alcohol and depression kicked in.

I lost a lot of things, besides the shop.

I had just come out of an eight-year relationship and I couldn’t handle it.

I couldn’t think of any way of making a comeback and I sunk deeper and deeper into alcoholism.

Even when I was with Cal_vin (now late), we couldn’t manage to make a song because we would link-up, start drinking and that was all we would be doing all the time.

I would do features for a little money and we would go and drink it all again,” he said.

In between all that, the musician suffered a freakish accident when he was hit by two cars in a horror incident that left him wheelchair bound.

“A car just came and hit me.

I remember my back crashing into the bonnet literally pushing the air out of my lungs and I had to pull it back into my lungs, then I rolled off and fell on the ground, I tried to stand up quickly, but I realised my leg was gone, when I tried to stand up it just collapsed so I just laid there in the middle of the streets.

The car that hit me parked on the side for a few seconds and as my friend was running towards the car, it drove off . . .”

“ . . . a group of guys from the taxi rank were now coming to my rescue, as they were about to carry me out of the road, another car came racing.

My friend tried to stop it with hand signals but the guy just flashed his lights and kept speeding.

So, everybody that had surrounded me just scrambled and left me on the road.

Somehow, I flipped myself over trying to move out the way but I left my arm in the way and the car ran over it.

I felt the bone crack, after that I couldn’t feel my arm anymore.

I really thought my arm was totally gone so I used my other hand to feel it and realised it was still attached to my body but it was just numb.

The whole thing was like a movie,” he said.

Despite all the setbacks, Pronix said he had fully recovered from the incidents and had also cleaned up his act.

Now he is ready to reclaim what at one point seemed like his God-ordained position in the world of afro jazz.

“Now I have gone back to Amavulindlela Ultimate Records, and that’s who I am working with.

They are the ones that are sponsoring my project. I released a track called My Sweetie and it did well.

Now I have eight tracks that are done and I want to launch a single leading to the release of an album that might have 13 tracks.

I’m also doing shows every weekend, working with Jam Session Band so hopefully the more we do shows the more we gain momentum to push the project.

Mostly I do live shows with Jam Session and we do everything from corporate gigs to weddings.

So far, it’s really looking good and I’m hopeful,” he said.