Ever smiling and joyful Tuku, with rising star Jah Prayzer
I will remember Oliver Mtukudzi for a career that I cannot find fault in, musically. He was to me the epitome of what African music should sound like coupled with the fact that he just didn’t write, produce and perform music because he had nothing else to do, it was what he was, a true music genius.
Before I met the man in our radio studios years back, I would have thought he was the hardest artist in the country to get near to. I was wrong. The moment he walked in, he greeted everybody with a warm smile and made you just fall in love with him from his husky voice loaded with humility and willingness to talk even on issues you would think any other artist would evade.
This was then when I was radio rookie, talking and taking selfies with arguably the biggest musician in the country and the region at large.
Credit: eNCA (Oliver Mtukudzi during the 21st Standard Bank Joy of Jazz Festival at Sandton Convention)
When I talk Oliver Mtukudzi with people, I do not compare him to the likes of Salif Keita, Yousou Ndor, Hugh Masekela, Brenda Fassie but place him in the same category as these greats. He not only defied boundaries but went through each and every wall (not the Trump Wall) with great ease with his music as the only tool he knew and had.
Samanyanga was a great crooner, I believe he spoke more in song than he ever did in a normal conversation. Evidenced by the 65 albums he produced in his entire career. The best of which, undoubtedly for me was Paivepo which he produced in the turn of the new century. Many will take me up on this confession/ opinion but with the little statistical gathering that I have done on this, it seems to be the most loved album from the late Greatest Of All Time musician ever to hail from Zimbabwe. The thick bass, hard hitting percussion and neatly arranged lead and backing vocals made it an instant hit album from the many he had produced at that time.
Mtukudzi starred and produced music for Neria in 1993
A few years back, in 1993 when the film Neria was released, my father took me to the movies for the very first time and at age 11 I marveled at these wonderful pictures from a story synonymous to our Zimbabwean setting. Without doubt, Tuku’s music as well as his appearance in the moving picture made it very enjoyable for me. It easily stirred the fire for his music and the movies but I must hasten to say, there was every bit of conviction in me that I too can be as great as Oliver Mtukudzi in anything I set my sights on.
There has got be nothing Tuku saw as impossible when it came to music. If he wasn’t trying a collaboration with a younger more distant genre like Reggae, he did so effortlessly with Joss Stone, Judith Sephuma, Louis Mhlanga, Bra Hugh Masekela or even with the classical ensemble Afro Tenors doing a rendition of the famous Miriam Makeba hit song, Pata Pata.
To the rest of the world reading this and who might not have an idea of how big Oliver Mtukudzi was to Zimbabwe, Zimbabwean music, Africa and its diaspora. He is the equivalent of the late Bob Marley of Jamaica, Michael Jackson of America, Luciano Pavarotti of Italy and Hugh Masekela of South Africa in a subdued manner so to speak.
23 January will forever be a sad reminder of the day, a year apart, when two of the region’s most iconic musicians from neighboring countries passed on. Tuku and Bra Hugh, friends and music colleagues have saddened me greatly.
What comforts is the thousands of music tracks that Tuku and other greats have left for me that can always remind me of how absolutely brilliant they have been. And for that I can always be grateful though the question who is it that can take up the banner of such great music for our country lingers at the back of my mind…
Rest In Peace Oliver “Tuku” Mtukudzi.
koroga festival nairobi kenya – oliver mtukudzi – sidney mcgregor
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