Well, this time let me cross to an extremely different end, sungura music. This is a type of music that is largely regarded as a perfect identity of local contemporary music. Although it has borrowed a number of tricks from other genres, sungura is one genre that can pass as ideal “Zimbabwean music” when we are not dealing with traditional genres.
It has brought to fore musicians such as Alick Macheso, Nicholas Zakaria, Tongai Moyo, Sulumani Chimbetu, John Chibadura, Leonard Dembo, Somandla Ndebele, Daiton Somanje, Josphat Somanje, Gift Amuli… the list is long.
There is no doubt that most of these musicians are the cream of local music but the worrying fact is that there are very few youngsters following their footsteps.
There was a time when urban groovers appeared to be youngsters that would easily shift attention from sungura to a new type of music that would appeal to younger generations but their crusade could not stand the test of time.
Most of our youngsters now turn to Western music as their cherished form of entertainment and there is very small room for young musicians to make a mark locally.
Ok! Let us say all our renowned sungura artists decide to hang their guitars; where would most of us go for exciting live shows? I mean the mass music market in the ghetto.
We can go to King Shaddy or Winky D’s shows but how long will they last and how many mature merrymakers will be willing to part with their money for such shows?
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These youngsters are good in this emerging genre of music but, like many before them it will not be easy to sustain the wave they have suddenly stirred among youths. The same happened with urban grooves.
Musicians like Sugar Sugar, Obvious Mutani and Simon Mutambi are trying to do justice to sungura music but odds are heavily stacked against them.
Only Kapfupi has shown that he has the potential to challenge established musicians in this genre.Maybe it has something to do with the history of these established musicians. While most of our youngsters in sungura have sketchy backgrounds in music, the majority of “big” musicians started their careers at the backline of other bands.
Groups such as Four Brothers, Vhuka Boys and Khiama Boys are among the bands that nurtured most of the popular musicians of our day.
Instrumentalists and backing vocalists would take their time in the bands and understand the operations while refining their talents.
By the time they started their own bands, it was just a matter of reproducing the structures of a band that any musician would have left.
With such experience, it is not surprising that some musicians easily made it after deciding to go it alone and we have the different exciting styles of sungura.
It is therefore not easy to predict the future of sungura music under such circumstances. On one side there are few young musicians trying to pursue the genre yet they lack experience and exposure while on the other is a new crop of youngsters that are content with entertaining youths through their “one-man” bands.
Unless someone seriously nurtures the youthful sungura musicians, the genre might fall by the wayside in the not-so-distant future, just like many other genres before it.
