A STAR THAT HID ITS LIGHT . . . the songs and moments that made Joe Maseko

By Bruce Ndlovu

When he was buried last Wednesday morning, with some of the most beautiful voices harmonising over his grave as the dust piled on his casket, a stranger unfamiliar with his name might have found it hard, judging from the crowd, to conclude just what kind of person Joe Maseko had been.

Birds of a feather flock together, the adage goes and so by that saying’s proverbial logic one can tell the character of a person by the company they keep. After songs had been sung, prayers had been said and dust upon dust piled upon his final resting place, the unknowing stranger would have struggled to sum up Joe “Puppa” Maseko from the company that had come to say goodbye.

Among the hundreds that gathered on a sunny afternoon at Luveve Cemetery were young musicians whose urban leanings were obvious from the way that they dressed. On the fringes of the procession, rappers, singers and house producers mumbled about the reputation and deeds of the man they were about to lay to rest. Also on the fringes was the city’s old guard, imbube artistes and jazz musicians who also muttered, taking care not to disturb proceedings, about his influence.

Closer to the casket were family and community members, people who knew a different Joe Maseko. They had not come to bury a music virtuoso but a friend, son and a neighbour.

All of these groups had gathered to celebrate their own version of Joe Maseko. It was certainly a unique gathering and in truth it might have been the first time that so many people had gathered to celebrate the life and work of a man whose work as a producer deserves its own greatest hits compilation.

“I wish that we gave him the flowers while he was alive so that he could smell them because he really was the man,” rapper Cal_vin told Sunday Life.

While many people have heard and danced to hits cooked up in Joe Maseko’s studios, few would have known that he was the man behind the music that brought them so much joy because he was rarely mentioned.

Even fewer people would have known how, in the late 90s Maseko had been a laughing stock in Gwabalanda when he established a studio in his own bedroom.

“I remember when we started out and the studio was in his bedroom. The equipment we had there was so laughable. I won’t lie, at that time no one believed in any of what we were doing and we were sort of like a joke in our neighbourhood,” said Stiff’s Diliza.

Diliza remembers the pain of those first days, when the odds just seemed stacked against them.

“We grew up in the same neighbourhood in Gwabalanda. There’s a brother of mine who’s now based in the United States who heard me rhyming over some kwaito beats one day. He approached me and said that his younger brother who was already based in the US, Vusa, was setting up a studio and Joe would be in charge of it. He said he would introduce me to Joe and I would start recording with him. So I started recording with Joe in 1999,” he said.

Now working with South African kwaito juggernaut Professor and having served years as Oskido’s apprentice at Kalawa Jazzmee, those harsh early days in Gwabalanda seem like a long time ago. However, for Diliza Maseko’s hand in shaping him into more than just another street corner lyricist is one that even time cannot erase.

“I came to him as an artiste but Joe turned me into something else. He made me his recording engineer and kwaito producer and the first album that I worked on as an engineer was the debut by Sandra Ndebele. A lot of people might not know this but Joe was a backing vocalist on Mama by Sandra Ndebele.

“We were not concentrating on one kind of genre but all kinds of music. That’s what Puppa taught me. He gained trust in me and that’s how I also produced and engineered Beatar Mangethe’s album,” he said.

Transforming artistes’ careers and consequently their lives was Maseko’s bread and butter. Jazz maestro Jeys Marabini remembers after toiling for years as an imbube artiste, he had approached Maseko with a bunch of songs as the idea to form a band took shape in his mind. Marabini’s tenacity and Maseko’s golden touch would lead to the birth of Emarabini, Marabini’s breakthrough debut album as a solo artiste.

“I had the idea to form a band in 2000 and so I had to approach him the following year with the idea for us to produce the song that I had already made,” Marabini told Sunday Life.

“There was a song that I felt was nice and I needed to change it from imbube and put instrumentation on it. The song was called Mzabalazo. The song had an imbube feel and I wanted to have a more jazz feel, a traditional feel that would have more impact. Joe was someone who was very adaptable and could experiment with different sounds so he could make such a transition possible. We worked on several songs on my new album,” he said.

Juggling jazz, kwaito, gospel and hip-hop artistes in his humble studio, Maseko’s reputation began to grow. From Jeys Marabini and Sandra Ndebele to Babongile Sikhonjwa and Street Niggaz, it was not long before the name Joe Maseko was heard in the corridors of power. Even that however, could not change the man who he truly was.

“I remember this one time the Minister of Information came to the studio and asked just how much we needed to improve the studio. The minister had been giving people who ran studios money but Joe suggested a sick, low amount of money. All the artistes were crying after that because they thought he would ask for more. Joe just didn’t like people doing things for him,” said Diliza.

While he worked with some of the most famous musicians in the country, it was his work with lesser known acts which gave Maseko the most pleasure. Such encounters also gave Maseko some of the most comic moments in studio.

“We once had a recording session with the famous prophet Ngwenya. He was really famous at the time with the “bombing” that he was doing. We didn’t know he was the famous prophet and just knew him as Thabiso Ngwenya. He came for a recording and brought 20 backing vocalists but the problem was that we were working from Joe’s bedroom at the time so we couldn’t fit them all in.

“We made them sing outside the studio and finally trimmed them down to eight. We arranged for the prophet to bring those eight to the studio the next day so we would continue with the recording. To our surprise the next day he came with 40 people. He wanted his backing vocalists to sound like a choir,” Diliza narrated.

Despite the impressive catalogue of hits that he had worked on, Maseko never lost his curiosity, a key ingredient in the making of a career that lasted over two decades.

“I never got to work with him professionally but I knew him personally. We would have talks about production and he would ask me ‘what did you use on this song? I heard it, I heard it’. That to me was some kind of affirmation that I was indeed on the right track,” said Cal_vin.

In the era where producers are stars in their own right, an era where a well-placed tag informs thousands of listeners just who produced a song, Maseko was a rare breed. He was a star that wanted to shine in anonymity, whose brilliance was only matched by its humbleness. While he was never one to beat his own drum, his work is now speaking louder than ever after his passing.

“The man was just a genius. He could do it all, whether it was reggae, traditional music or pop music. Whatever kind of music that you wanted made Joe could deliver. He was not just a producer who sat in the studio but he could play instruments and sing as well,” said Marabini. Sunday News.