As an act of bravery, love cannot be sentimental; as an act of freedom, it must not serve as a pretext for manipulation. It must generate other acts of freedom; otherwise, it is not love.
~ Paolo Freire

I stumbled upon the information that Oliver Mtukudzi is the highest selling artist in Southern Africa. I knew he is well respected the world over, but the highest selling? It made sense; the man is a musical genius.

I remember when I was in South Africa a few years back I noticed that all the good music stores had a whole shelf of Oliver Mtukudzi music and his CDs were much more expensive than those of say Hugh Masekela. Oliver Mtukudzi sings entirely in Shona. That means the majority of his fans do not understand him, at least on a lyrical level. His musical arrangements are so brilliant; I would love instrumentals of his if he released an instrumental album.

But his genius is in his lyrics:

mhiripiri ine munakiro wayo/kana sugar inemanakiro ayo/munyu une manakiro awo/kuvava kuvava hayo mhiripiri, inga ndomanakiro ayo/kutapira kutapira hayo sugar inga ndomasikirwo ayo/kuvavira kuvavira hawo munyu nokuti manakiro  awo…mukurarama katifanani/kana chimiro hachifanani/kana mhuka dzesango hadzifanani/ndomasikirwo acho/saka tisashorane mukurarama/tisasekana mukurarama/tinzwisisane mukurarama/

Roughly translated the Shona lyrics are: chilies are delicious in their own way/sugar is delicious in its own way/salt is delicious in its own way/chilies are hot and they are delicious that way/sugar is sweet and it’s delicious that way/salt is delicious in its own way…in life we are not the same/we are not the same in build/even wild animals are different/ that’s the way they were created/so let’s not look down upon each other in life/let’s not laugh at each other/let’s live in harmony together…

It’s a song that speaks directly to Zimbabweans; we are highly intolerant of each other’s divergent views, opinions and differences along tribal lines, political lines and so on. We have taken on the bad habits of our leaders who go to extreme lengths to eliminate political opponents and this has led to bloody elections all the time. It’s a vicious cycle that will continue long after we have gotten rid of the current leadership.

There is another song of Mtukudzi’s that has got a message along the same lines:

Buda pachena munun’una vagoziva zvaunofunga/ asika wochinzwawo zvavanofunga/kubudirana pachena muzukuru kuteera nekuteera/ naivo vachanzwawo/torawo mukana wokuteera zvinotaurawo vamwe/ worega kuropodza/ kuropodza zvisina maturo / chinonzi hurukuro/ kutaura tichinzwana/ votaura iwe uchiteerera/wotaurawo ivo vachiteerera…

… Come out young brother so we can know what you think/but also listen to what they think/being clear with each other is listening and listening/they will hear you/take time to listen to what others say/ stop rumbling on and on/ rumbling on senselessly/conversation is understanding each other/others talk while you listen/you talk and others listen…

One of our biggest weaknesses is talking down to people and not giving a damn about what they have to say. When was the last time your local MP listened to what you had to say? When was the last the time the people of Zimbabwe openly criticised the president without everyone in the vicinity scurrying for cover and fearing for the speaker’s life?

Oliver Mtukudzi’s songs are so full of meaning and I have enjoyed them for decades; ever since I was a little boy. Songs like Nhava talk of the Diaspora in a very enlightening manner. Songs like Bindu are just brilliant! Those who did not grow up listening to Tuku, as he is affectionately known, think he got onto the music scene in 1998 with the release of the highly successful album Tuku Music, but the man has been around. Remember Mbombela? Remember the soundtrack to the Movie Neria? I was born in the Ghetto, my mum in the Ghetto, my heart in the Ghetto, so you can call me the Ghetto boy…

Having spent much of my adult life thinking about my language and culture, I felt both comfort and dismay in reading Thembi Sachikonye’s article for Newsday Losing our way:

Sure, we need to ask ourselves whether there is anything wrong with being swallowed up in a cultural tidal wave, participating willingly in the elimination of difference and diversity, and taking up another people’s way of life, another people’s language, and another people’s values in the name of progress, education or sophistication. And I am hoping that when we have asked ourselves these questions we will end up with an answer we can all live with.

We cannot redeem our cultural failures without a concerted and consistent effort. We cannot right our wrongs without first acknowledging that there is a problem, and then working hard to fix it.

This translates to a daily consciousness of how we communicate and conduct ourselves around those we want to influence. It means carefully filtering the influences we subject our children to.

I think is time for a cultural renaissance. We must begin to have a different and more meaningful understanding of our culture and languages and with that a more concerted effort towards preserving these. We cannot continue to wax lyrical on the opportunities allowed by globalisation, the emergence of technologies and media that are more inclusive. Yet when faced with the challenge of putting these tools to utilitarian use, we balk.

As a people we cannot continue to brag about how educated we are, but when we truly examine where all that education is going, what good it does us as a nation, suddenly there is silence. Where is the wiki on Zimbabwean history language and culture written for and by Zimbabweans themselves? Why aren’t more Shona and Ndebele books available in audio and as mp3 downloads? I want to read more histories by and about Zimbabweans that are without a political agenda, and watch well-written films that are entirely in vernacular and subtitled in English. We as Zimbabweans have to prioritise our cultures and languages. We cannot afford to wait for someone to create a grant that will specifically allow us to do so.

The Reith Lectures is a series of annual radio lectures given by leading figures of the day, commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service. In July, Aung San Suu Kyi spoke at length about her life and what has inspired her activism.

From the NewStatesmen, this caught my eye:

At a screening of the first lecture at Broadcasting House, it was mesmerising to sit and watch ASSK speaking at length (the footage had been recently smuggled out of Burma). Traditional peach silk top. Blue flowers in her hair. A slash of orange lipstick. She is resolutely not a spin-doctored, slick operator. Two things stood out: her use of the old-fashioned word gallantry, and her repeated use of the word passion.

Though ASSK is clearly unbowed, at one point during the live Q&A down the line from Rangoon she admitted that the lights had been switched off by the authorities and she was sitting at the telephone in the dark. How fitting that she had, just minutes earlier, quoted from Ratushinskaya’s prison poem that ends: “It isn’t true, I am afraid, my darling!/But make it look as though you haven’t noticed.”

She loves not

If I were a baby,
In the comfort of your womb
In the warmth of your flesh,
Wondering if there is life after birth,
Singing when you sing
Crying when you cry
Laughing when you do
With you always
I would wish I could stay inside you
Forever,
For Africa loves not her children,
She sends them to war against their mothers.

- Dzikamai Bere

Listen to Dzikamai Bere’s interview on being young and Zimbabwean here

Zimbabwean writers, poets, sportsmen and women, journalists, entrepreneurs are making Zimbabwe proud. Pity our politicians aren’t doing so as well.

Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo has won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa’s leading literary award, for her short story entitled ‘Hitting Budapest’. The Chair of Judges, award-winning author Hisham Matar, announced NoViolet Bulawayo as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner held last night at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Hisham Matar said: “The language of ‘Hitting Budapest’ crackles.  Here we encounter Darling, Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Stina and Sbho, a gang reminiscent of Clockwork Orange. But these are children, poor and violated and hungry. This is a story with moral power and weight, it has the artistry to refrain from moral commentary. NoViolet Bulawayo is a writer who takes delight in language.”

NoViolet Bulawayo was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She recently completed her MFA at Cornell University, in the US, where she is now a Truman Capote Fellow and Lecturer of English. Another of her stories, ‘Snapshots’, was shortlisted for the 2009 SA PEN/Studzinski Literary Award. NoViolet has recently completed a novel manuscript tentatively titled We Need New Names, and has begun work on a memoir project.

Source: Booktrade.info