Zimbabwe’s most ‘successful’ album: How Insingizi’s low budget project became a gold-selling sensation

Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
WHEN music lovers talk of the most successful Zimbabwean albums, few ever mention Insingizi’s Voices from Southern Africa, despite the fact that the album has a Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) gold certification, a feat that even some prominent American artistes have found very hard to achieve.

Perhaps when people talk of blockbuster Zimbabwean albums and songs, tracks like Chiteketeke, masterful composer Leonard Dembo’s 14-minute-long ode to love that took Zimbabwe and Southern Africa by storm, come to mind.

With that song reportedly selling over 100 000 units in Zimbabwe alone and with its regional fame, it is hard to tell just many records it moved. Some, like Tuku backstage author Shepard Mutamba claim Oliver Mtukudzi’s song, Bvuma-Tolerance, is one of Zimbabwe’s biggest commercial successes, selling over 100 000 copies.

However, in a country where artistes rarely come out in the open and declare the true figures from the sale of albums, even that claim from Tuku’s former publicist is disputed, with Mutamba’s successor Sam Mataure quoted one time as saying: “By now Tuku would be a millionaire if the album pushed such volumes. That is not real, figures are exaggerated,” said Mataure.

Such is the opaque nature of the Zimbabwean music industry that such figures are ever freely given out by artistes, for varying reasons. However, it is far much easier to track the success or failures of Zimbabwean heavyweights that have exported their talent overseas.

The Bhundu Boys, for example, were a staple on British stages in the 1980s but none of their albums ever reached the much-coveted gold or platinum certification. Instead, people usually point towards their appearance in front of 70 000 strong crowd at Wembley, opening for Madonna, as an example of their success.

Of course, the group later imploded and did not realise its full potential. Thomas Mapfumo’s Corruption, the 1989 release which was his first released under a major American label, also did not reach gold status despite the album largely acknowledged as his introduction to mass audiences overseas.

When Bulawayo’s Insingizi began working on what in the end became a 16-track album at the turn of the century, they did not at any point think they might be mentioned in the same sentence with those great names or, better yet, surpass their best achievements in terms of pure album sales. After all, one has to sell 500 000 copies of an album to get a gold certification.

Insingizi had relocated to Austria in 1997, with what had been once an imbube ensemble reduced to a trio as other members left to pursue other interests. While the trio of Vusa Mkhaya, Dumisani

“Ramadu” Moyo and Blessings “Nqo” Nkomo had always sold their albums on the sidelines of shows, they had never done so at a large scale.

“The interesting thing is that we were finding ourselves as we rebranded, changing from Insingizi Emnyama to just Insingizi,” recalled Vusa Mkhaya. “Recording these songs as a trio, was something that we had never done and we had no idea about the direction that the album was going to go or how we were going to sell it. Most of our albums were sold at live shows because we had done recordings but these were mostly at live shows and we would have 20 or so CDs to sell after our performances. So, we had not had any album that had been sold at a music store or online, so this is was our first time. We had no idea it would end up in that direction,” he said.

As they embarked on this journey into the unknown, Insingizi had one major problem. They did not have a lot of money and if they were to record an album, they would have to do so on a shoestring budget. The nearest studio to them was Creative Pool Ollersbach, owned by an Austrian guitarist who did not mind doing a favour or two for this trio of ambitious Zimbabweans who, at that point, did not know that they were on the verge of a major breakthrough. With only $1 500 in their pockets, they decided they were going to give it a crack, bringing the harmonious sounds of imbube to European ears.

 

“So, after asking this friend for a favour, he gave us a good price and said we can come and record. His studio was about 200km from where we were, so we would drive there, book a cheap bed and breakfast place so would could make it on time and be able to record. We recorded about 12 tracks in the beginning and sent them to a few record labels because we had no idea if anyone would be interested in the music that we do,” he said.

Soon their voices had reached ears in the United Kingdom, where a record label felt that their music could be marketed and distributed to a larger audience.

“A record label in the UK became interested in what we were doing but they told us what our songs were short and they wanted our albums to be at least 45 minutes long. Some of our songs were 45 seconds or a minute long so we had to record more songs which meant a bit more studio time.

We were lucky because the guy who owned the studio, since he is a musician, decided to give us more time to record. So, we recorded more songs and the album ended up with more songs, 16 in total. We did the mixing in the same studio but with a different mixing engineer and we sent the whole album to ARC Music in the UK, which was doing our publishing as well as marketing for the album,” he said.

It was at this point that the three young men from Bulawayo realised that big things were now afoot.

While they had previously only worked with recording engineers Thomas Ranozs and Chris Scheidl, the number of people working on Sounds of Southern Africa suddenly grew.

“When the record label came and said they wanted to distribute the album worldwide, that’s when we realised that this was now becoming bigger than us. This was our first release to be marketed and distributed by a proper record label but we still had no idea what was awaiting us.

“We agreed to do more songs because when you’re working with a record label, you have to follow certain guidelines. They have a say on certain things. In the beginning, it was just us recording and if we decided on nine or 10 songs that was it. But with the record label coming in, they were now guiding us on the direction and also on the time lengths of the tracks.

“We sent all the songs to them and we had to the sleeve design of the album. Here we had no say because we just did a photoshoot and sent all the pictures to them because they have a creative director who listens to the music, checks all the pictures and makes sure that they can come up with a cover that can sell the music. From the three of us, writing and recording songs in the studio with our two sound engineers, the numbers grew. We now had a creative director, we had someone doing the mastering, we had someone the marketing and distribution. The team grew and there were people we were now answering to,” he said.

Fate has a funny way of intervening in people’s lives and the religious might claim that perhaps the hand of God touched Insingizi after the release of their album. Once-upon-a-time, a Walmart music executive’s ears happened to chance upon a few choice tunes from Voices from Southern Africa, released in 2004. It was there and then that he decided that he decided that Walmart, now the world’s largest company by revenue, would start selling copies of the album.

“About a year later or so, we got a message from our label telling us that there is an offer to sell our album in Walmart shops. Walmart is a big chain and they have a music department and they were playing our album while people were shopping and this is how they started buying it. It was available across the US. Apparently, their music person heard our album somewhere and bought it and then decided to sell it at the shops and that’s how everything fell in place for us.

“We had no idea that it was going to sell because putting an album in the shops doesn’t mean it’s going to sell but after some time people in the US started writing to us on our website, telling us they bought the album and enjoyed it. I got to a message from our record label, I was going to Denmark at the time for the World Music Expo and they told me they would also be exhibiting there. While there, they told me we would get our gold disks for the sales of our album in America,” he said.

Mkhaya said when the sales royalties started trickling in, the group received what he described as their biggest ever cheque from music. It also set the trio on a path of success, as they toured around the world for the next two decades.

“Obviously, people think you get a lot of money once an album gets that kind of recognition but it can take a while for you to get royalties. That’s why, when an artiste has a hit song, it can take a year or two for them to get money and they have to survive on gigs. We started to see change when the royalty money started coming and we received one of our biggest cheques ever.

“This is something that changed our lives because you’re at home then you receive money or you get a notification telling you that there’s a cheque coming. A lot of things changed because we did a follow up album and it was now easier to sell it in the US and other countries. It opened the door for us to start touring in the US and other countries, like Canada, China and so forth,” he said.