The Tuku that I knew: The reluctant recording superstar artist, entertainer and people’s hero

By Hopewell Chin’ono

I first met Oliver Mtukudzi in 1993 at Record and Tape Productions (RTP) in Harare’s CBD next to First Street, I was a young boy straight out of school.

He was signed to RTP and I was an agent for Ziggy Marley’s manager, Sky High, who had just done a deal with RTP to sell Mad Cobra’s Step Aside.

Tuku was a very simple and easygoing man, the unassuming music superstar whom I had grown to know through his music, I was humbled by his simplicity, as many who met him would also testify.

I first interfaced with his music in 1981, my late brother Crispen had lost his wife and as part of his routine, he would come back from work and belt Tuku’s Rufu Ndima Dzongonyedze all evening drinking his favorite beverage, Castle Lager.

It was a therapeutic accessory for my brother, something that I would get to tell Tuku in 2017, that is how his music helped many to cope with inevitable social pressures of life like death.

He was the people’s musician touching souls with his brand of extraordinary music.

My next encounter with Tuku’s music was when I had just started High School.

In the mid 80s his friend called Jack Sadza died in a car accident in Hwange, Tuku wrote a song that became a classic in tribute of their friendship simply titled, Jeri.

Jeri went toe to toe with Thomas Mapfumo’s Mugarandega on the hit charts of the then Radio 3, we all fell in love with Jeri and it has become a sound track for remembering lost friends.

Two decades later in 2007, I was introduced to Tuku formally at his home in Norton by his contemporary, Ray Moyo.

I was working on my first documentary film, Pain in My Heart, and I needed a sound track for that film.

Ray Moyo who had grown up with Tuku in Harare second oldest township, Highfield, took me to his home and I was immediately amazed at the professional that Tuku was.

He took us to his studio next to his home and he allowed me to record him in a practice session, it was to be one of many such recordings that I was allowed to exclusively make.

When I told him what I was working on a film on HIV and Aids, he said that he would let me use his music for free and he also agreed to be in the film talking about his personal expriences of losing loved ones to the condition.

I picked Rufu Ndima Dzongonyedze as the main soundtrack for the documentary film Pain in My Heart, it went on to win the CNN African Journalist of the year award, Kaiser Family Foundation Award for Excellence in HIV and AIDS Reporting in Africa and the USAID Auxillia Chimusoro Communication Award and the African Leadership Institute also acknowledged the doccie.

Tuku was so happy at the film’s success such that he promised to work with me on my future film projects, a promise that he indeed fulfilled.

Tuku was not just a music superstar-recording artist and entertainer, he was very much interested in film, and in fact he provided the sound track for the blockbuster feature film Neria, and he also invested financially in film productions.

Neria is probably the biggest feature film ever made in Zimbabwe and its soundtrack has been sampled by many artists around the world including the global music superstar, Joss Stone.

I later disappeared into television news production for seven years as a producer for UK’s ITV News, but I would call Tuku from time to time, and at times I would go to see him at Pakare Paye Arts center, a place that will define his music empire and legacy.

On one such visit, I met him and his late son Sam who was also a musician of note, I exchanged phone numbers with Sam, we would call each other occasionally.

After finishing making A Violent Response, I asked Sam if he could do the sound track for the film, he immediately agreed without hesitation of the political nature of the content in the documentary.

Like his father, he resolutely refused to take any money from me saying that “kubatsirana mukoma, it is an important film.”

A Violent Response chronicles Zimbabwe’s post election violence in 2008, which claimed the lives of over 200 people resulting in a Government of National Unity in 2009.

Sam died in 2010 in a tragic car accident before he had seen the finished cut of the film.

Many years later I would take the whole music session of the sound track and the videos to his father who was moved to tears because he didn’t know that Sam had done the soundtrack for A Violent Response.

Then in 2017 after I had started work on State of Mind my documentary film on mental illness, I approached Jah Prayza and asked him to work on a sound track for the film.

He agreed to do the sound track but it just never happened, then by chance I bumped into Tuku at the passport office and I told him what I was working on, a film on mental illness.

He asked me to come and see him at his Pakare Paye Center, his music Headquarters in Norton.

I drove to Norton to see him and after just five minutes of explaining to him about the film, he stopped me, “…go and make your film, I will make the music.”

He indeed made the music and then as I always did with Tuku, I took liberties and asked him to sing a specific song that I thought would fit in with the mood of the film, over and above the instrumentation that he had done.

“If that is what you want, I will do it for you,” he said and he proceeded to sing one of his classics, Seiko, and agreed to let me use it as the credits film music track.

I took the film to him after I had finished the postproduction process, he loved it so much, “…you should make my documentary, you should tell me story,” he said.

“We should really do that next year (2019).” It was meant to happen this year….

After watching State of Mind, he wanted to mentor one of the guys in the film who is a singer who had been struggling with drug and alcohol induced psychosis, again it was meant to happen this year….

Oliver Mtukudzi was born in 1952, he lived in Highfiled, a township in the then Salisbury, the Capital city of colonial Rhodesia and the political hotbed of the anti-colonial struggle.

He came from Mashonaland Central and spoke the Korekore dialect, the term Korekore is used to identify people who speak one of the central Shona varieties which include Zezuru, Karanga, Manyika and Korekore.

Other famous Korekore people are Strive Masiyiwa, Joice Mujuru and James Makamba.

Tuku never attempted to move away from singing in Korekore, instead he popularized it making it known all over Zimbabwe and beyond, a real cultural ambassador for his people.

He worked on many good causes that included HIV and Aids, domestic violence and mental illness.

Just this evening an American diplomat told me that Tuku was meant to sing at a project for women victims of domestic violence.

He was a Unicef ambassador and as I said before, he never demanded any money when doing all this good work.

Tuku was NO fool, he could be very tough on fellow professionals and demanded the best when performing.

I asked him why he agreed to sing at political gatherings that many deemed not right.

“…Hopewell, how do you influence them if you don’t talk to them, people should look at the choice of songs that I chose to perform when I am invited to sing at such gatherings?” he said.

Many will share their own tales of Tuku, there are thousands of great Tuku stories and I have already started hearing and reading about them, fascinating personal accounts that show that Tuku was not a single story.

Mukoma, thank you for being the brother you were to me, you were more than a brother, you were a teacher.

Now I have to find someone else to make my sound tracks, it won’t be easy at all…

May you Soul Rest in Peace Samanyanga, you don’t need anyone to declare you a hero, you are not and will never be that cheap.

You are the people’s hero and that is what matters to the whole of Zimbabwe and the rest of the world, you were the people’s star and will remain as such.

Goodbye Mukoma, Rest Easy Samanyanga.

Hopewell Chin’ono is an award winning Zimbabwean international Journalist and Documentary Filmmaker. He is a Harvard University Nieman Fellow and a CNN African Journalist of the year.

He is also a Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Africa Leadership Institute.

Hopewell has a new documentary film looking at mentalx illness in Zimbabwe called State of Mind, which was launched to critical acclaim.
Oliver Mtukudzi wrote the sound track for State of Mind.

It was recently nominated for a big award at the Festival International du Film Pan-Africain de Cannes in France. You can watch the documentary trailer below.