Oliver Mtukudzi
Paivepo
(Putumayo Artists)
Chiwoniso
Ancient Voices
(Tinder Records)
The question you have to ask about Oliver Mtukudzi is not “Where has he been all this time?” but “Where has the world been?” because in Zimababwe, he’s a big, big star, and has been for a couple of decades. The 48-year-old was “discovered” last year as the third booking on the second annual North American tour of the Africa Fête package, behind Taj Mahal’s collaboration with an ensemble of virtuoso Malian stringed-instrument players and avant-pop icon Baaba Maal. Turns out Tuku, as he’s known back home, was the surprise star of the show, opening each set with the kind of easy-rolling African rhythms, heavily flavored with the skip-beat rhythms of neighboring South Africa, that he plays from late night to early morning twice a month at The Live Wire in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare. Sung entirely his native Shona, Tuku’s lyrics barely need translation because somehow the emotion of them—the fierce insistence that his people, the people of Zimbabwe, must take heart and struggle proudly through the problems plaguing nearly all emerging countries right now in Africa—comes through on a level far deeper than spoken language.
Perhaps it’s his youthful devotion to Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett that makes the feeling in Oliver Mtukudzi’s music so instantly recognizable to audiences in the U.S.; in any event, once the deep-soul geniality of his music gets in your ear, it tends to stay there (just ask Bonnie Raitt, who borrowed the music from one of his signature tunes for the closing number to her most recent album). To accompany his North American “debut” last year, Putumayo released Tuku Music, an essential purchase for lovers of rhythmic music and especially those who care what that music is about; this year’s Paivepo (Once Upon A Time) is even better, topping all sales records in Zimbabwe before its North American release. Graced with the acoustic lightness of music based in rhythms derived from the mbira—a.k.a. marimba, kalimba or “thumb-piano”—as Zimbabwe’s is, Mtukudzi’s blend draws heavily on the stop-start, turn-on-a-dime influences of South African music. Stirred with his unflinching yet warmly gravelled voice, Tuku’s songs bring a philosopher-poet’s perspective to the problems of the day; the same directness, a kind of fatherly joviality, shines through the music, with Paivepo sounding even brighter, less preachy and more incurably danceable.
Chiwonisa Maraire, “Chi” in her home country, brings a younger generation’s perspective to the world of Zimbabwean music, mixing English lyrics with her native Shona, relying on even prettier melodies and favoring a more eclectic mix of instrumental textures (from unadorned mbira ensembles to glittering, searing electric guitar to R&B organ fills and blues harmonica). As fond of unabashed love songs as the direct political statement (“You must be brave, you must be strong,”says the chorus to the title track of her solo debut, Ancient Voices), Chiwonisa was raised in the U.S. by a master-musician father, returning home at 15 to explore the ways in which she can bring the ancient heritage alive without sacrificing the ability to be utterly hip and up-to-date. Soulful in the manner of Sally Nyolo, Angeliique Kidjo and even Cesaria Evora (with whom she toured briefly), Chiwonisa’s urgent, innocent and searching style already has been recognized in Zimabawe (where she composed the theme for the popular film Everyone’s Child, included here as the closing track) and in France where she was jointly chosen as 1999 new artist of the year by the French Foreign Office and Radio France International.
If it’s true “You’ve got to suffer, if you want to sing the blues,” that goes a long way to explaining why so much of the music from a country as outrageously prosperous as the U.S. at the turn of the millennium continues to be about as decadent and shallow as even the harshest critic might imagine, and why a country like Zimababwe—the former British-ruled Rhodesia until its struggle for independence reached complete success in 1980—can produce a pair of sterling talents like Oliver Mtukudzi and Chiwoniso Maraire, and a pair of profoundly moral, yet highly entertaining, albums like Paivepo and Ancient Voices, each as fresh and gutsy and sublimely satisfying as any contemporary music could want to be.
