ONAI MUSHAVA
THE legend, Oliver Mtukudzi, slept with life and death in the same bed.
Recent revelations about his paternal negligence call back his vindictive biographer Shepherd Mutamba’s claim the superstar was a great man but not a good man.
At this point, nothing is more sacred for Tuku’s daughters, Sandra and Samatha, than finding closure.
Artistes sometimes become great to everyone at the expense of the people in their lives.
Especially the women in their lives.
The great man theory has to be demystified.
But who is to be judge?
Artistes just happen to be on the pedestal.
Like leaders, they may just be a microcosm of their own society.
And if sinners make the best saints, isn’t it because they are preaching the loudest to themselves?
For lifting his music to higher truths, rather than bending it down to his weakness, Tuku was trying to be good, just like we are all still trying.
With that being said, the recent revelations merit a revisiting of Tuku music, where it was all so messy and personal.
A year apart, Tuku recorded two albums mourning his best friend, Jack Sadza, “Gona” (1986) and his father, Samson Mtukudzi, “Zvauya Sei” (1987).
The records spoke to the darkest hours of his life. He also found time to live it up in the bloody streets of love and hate.
Two albums from the same period, “Gona” (1986) and “Wawona” (1987), diarized his bed-hopping.
More specifically, the two albums gave his side of the story on two broken marriages, with each union salvaged by the end of the other.
Tuku started seeing Daisy while married to Melody Murape and had a child with her.
“During our time in Eastlea, around 1986, my love for Tuku began to wane because I was not happy with the marriage and the way I was being treated as a result of his relationship with Daisy,” Melody recalled in Shepherd Mutamba’s 2015 book, “Tuku Backstage”.
Tuku may have been making the most of polygamy when he went back to entertain Melody while Daisy was pregnant. In Mutamba’s book, there was, however, a time when his separation with Daisy got a little too real.
Per “Tuku Backstage”, he went to Daisy’s house and saw something that wasn’t quite to his liking. When he would later follow Daisy to Kwekwe after ending it with Melody, she waited for him with one question, “Didn’t you leave me saying my blanket is too long?”
(A Shona idiom that deeply offends). Whereas “Gona” album is dedicated to Jack Sadza in the liner notes, only the deep cut “Jeri” is directed to his deceased manager.
The title track, “Gona”, has the lyrics, “Mupfuhwiraiko unenge sango? Gona rawawana igona reuroyi” (The herb you found is a witching herb).
At Tuku’s funeral, Melody said she left the man because she didn’t want to be in a polygamous situation.
They had remained together living as husband and wife five years after Daisy came into the picture.
In 1986, Melody left Tuku and initiated divorce proceedings that were f inally entered into effect in 1993.
The divorce was triggered by the revelation that Tuku had paid roora for Daisy, so that they were now officially two women in the same kitchen.
But Melody’s departure, fought by Tuku with pleas and court action, compounded his sense of abandonment.
Bandless, bereaved and ill at the time, if he had felt entitled to Melody, whatever his shenanigans, he especially needed her now.
Reunited with Daisy in Kwekwe, Mtukudzi threw himself into an album potentially dissing his first wife.
“Ndakakutsvaka pandairwara, ndiyo nguva yawakanditiza/ Siyana neni ndakatsvaka wandinoda” (I looked for you while I was sick, that’s the time you left me/ Leave me alone, I found someone I love).
“I just needed a new environment. ’Cause I’d been sick for too long,” Tuku is quoted in Jennifer W. Kyer’s book, “Living Tuku Music in Zimbabwe” (2016).
“And when I was in Kwekwe, there was Zig-Zag, doing nothing. And as a sick person, I didn’t want to stay in bed. I wanted to go out. So I used to go and visit Zig-Zag, and of course I would take the guitar and say, ‘Come on, let’s play this song.’ And hey, we came up with something new, and that was a band.”
The end of Tuku’s first band had been another disappointment. His drummer and bassist, both men of the bottle, had sabotaged his first overseas tour, alleging unfair compensation.
Tuku’s right-hand man, Picky Kasamba, stuck with him from across Mukadota’s band, but suggests the old man had it coming when the band left.
The Black Spirits went on the road for sheer passion, living hand to mouth, suffering through avoidable logistical binds, and playing second-fiddle to contemporaries like the Green Arrows and the Blacks Unlimited.
Not a few Tuku years were spent alone, unnoticed, bandless and structureless. Thoughts of Harare four tollgates away may justify a less obvious interpretation of “Kushaya Mwana”, another song on “Wawona” : “Vana vemhiriyo kukoma/ Ndongoenda ndenga/ Ndichatuma aniko?/ Ndichangoita ndega.” In Kwekwe, katekwe meets chigiyo, a blend of old hands.
In the liner notes of “Wawona”, Tuku adopts Zig-Zag as “my new backing band.”
“Hatimbotya”, a defiant “Samanyemba”-like joint on the album introduces Stanley Phiri on drums, Gilbert Zvamaida on lead guitar, Idan Banda on rhythm guitar, Fabian Chikamba on bass, and George Paradza on vocals.
To crown his newfound Kwekwe nationalism, Tuku lines up at the bus terminus in different outfits on the album cover.
The Kwekwe years start off subdued, and quickly veer into gospel albums, “Ndotomuimbira,” “Rumbidzai Jehovah” and “Pfugama Unamate.”
The holy effort finds Tuku playing acoustic, bass, drums and keyboards by himself.
With acoustic, Tuku somewhat calls back touches of Jordan Chataika, one of the solo guitarists he trained himself to.
The first album of the pack is dedicated to Daisy, who whatever else she is, is not a bad muse, as evidenced by, “Svovi” (1996), the penultimate album of the era.
In 1997, before Tuku Music, the album that transformed Mukosori the underdog to Samanyanga the uplayable, we get another subdued Kwekwe effort, “Ndega Zvangu”.
The title, Ndega Zvangu, can be a sour admission of yet another bandless effort.
The album’s themes are varied from “Andinzwi” to the original “Ndasakura Ndazunza” and “Ndakuneta”, but is this not the sort of thing an unacknowledged artiste would sing about?
