Blessing Shumba is battling a rare and nagging headache of a growing stockpile of unreleased recorded songs.
By Norma Tsopo
The mechanic-cum-musician who appears completely lost to his gift has, in a punishing passionate schedule, recorded more than 50 songs in the past 12 months, ballooning his catalogue of recorded songs to 60.
The Psalmist, as Shumba now prefers to be known as, has to date released 49 songs either directly under him or as contributions to colleagues.
“I now have 60 recorded songs and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them,” Shumba told The Standard Style last week, before hinting that he may have to release annually for the next five years to ease the dilemma.
“I think we will have to release an album every year for the next five years.”
While this would be good news to his legions of fans who often felt starved by one of the country’s finest gospel musician as he has previously had to hold up on a new album to allow previous projects to cool-off.
His March 8, and fifth album release — Calvary, The Holy Psalms volume 2, is a clear example. Shumba had been sitting on it since last year as NdiJesu, The Holy Psalms Volume 1 continued to do well more than 12 months after its release.
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It even won him a top gong in the Radio Zimbabwe Top 100 at the turn of the new year.
This was despite having had nine songs which had been left aside when he recorded the album. He had recorded 20 songs and had only picked 11 for release in a blind pick that kept out the song he hoped to use as the title track — an inspiring and thought piercing and serenading cut.
“Those nine songs may never ever be released. I cannot consider them in my next album because the message God wants me to communicate in the next album is different. The theme has changed,” Shumba had said then.
“God reveals messages that are specific for the times, so releasing them anyhow will be going against God’s prophesy.”
This is precisely part of the problem he faces. He is not his own man — he has to wait on God, and be directed by Him.
Of himself then, there is no way he will find a way of stopping the growing stockpile or whittling it down by frequent releases.
He is in his own league, and world!
His creative juices are dripping and he is not putting any breaks to his urge to record.
By August last year he had recorded a further 14 songs for which he hoped to pick only eight for release on his latest offering but by late January the recordings had grown to 35.
Listening to some of the songs, there was no way it was ever going to be easy for anyone to chose which ones were to be the best songs for the album.
So it was with both a mixture of satisfaction and disappointment that I listened to Calvary. It was so rich and classy yet I felt his fans were robbed. The more than 40 songs that he picked from were worthy.
But such is the genius of the Mutare-based musician.
In spite of never running short of compositions, Shumba has only released two albums in the past five years.
NdiJesu was released after a two-year hiatus and after his fans cried hoarse for a new album.
But it was the same fans who ironically were standing in the way for his next release as they held on to it for much longer than even he had anticipated.
Shumba began his musical career in the late 1990s. At some point he even worked with the Mahendere Brothers in recording a five-track album at Corner Studios between 2001 and 2002.
The project was a flop. It never even went onto the market and the songs are not among the 60 ready to release songs he has. The sound was bad, he admits.
The talented young Shumba then formed a choral group with his brothers with whom they recorded an album — Tumai Mweya — that did poorly.
He then went solo taking the music industry by storm with his 2008 release Ishe Wazvose. NdiMwari followed, and a phenomena was born. Then there was Shongwe.
