Reflections on sunday : May our entertainers live longer!

Why is life escaping from those who please our ears when they are still in their prime? The most recent death of a musician was on 3rd this month. On that day, death took one of our most prominent singers in the Great Lakes region, Christophe Matata. Matata was as great a singer as they come. He was Burundian but could as well have been a global citizen, such were the many ears that he pleased. At barely 50 and boasting a voice that had not been touched by the years’ wear and tear, he still had a long career of happy crooning ahead of him. His voice first caught my attention in 1987, when I was peddling chalk to eke out a living in Kenya. He had just released a sweet melody called “Amaso Akunda” (loving eyes). It was not a sensation in Kenya where then-Zaïrese music was king, but it certainly was to Barundi/Banyarwanda, wherever they were. Before Matata, there was the death of Bobby Farrell on 30th December 2010. To many, the name may not mean much. However, to those of my time it represented agility and enigma. I know Farrell when he was in a group of four known as “Boney M”, where he alone was male. He was known for expert moves and was connected to a deep voice that went well with the females voices. Rumour had it that the deep voice did not belong to him, thus the enigma. The rumour attributed the voice to the manager of the band who recorded it in the studios and Farrell only mimicked it on stage. To-date, that remains a rumour. Farrell was 61 but still agile. On 13th December 2010, another musical heavy-weight hailing from the East African region fell. The Tanzanian Remmy Ongala may have been known more by the nickname he self-mockingly gave himself than his real name: Sura Mbaya (ugly face). Ironically, the death that took him was the subject of the song that catapulted him to prominence, “Kifo” (death). At age 63, he seems to have lived longer than many singers. Before Ongala, there was the death of the music-world’s dinosaur that everyone in every age bracket and on every corner of the globe identified with. Michael Jackson was a musical wizard and a darling of everyone. Nonetheless, he had his own mystery around him that he took to the grave. He was 51 years old but looked half his age. Talking about his age and the mystery around him reminds me about one of the jokes on him. A kid asked his father if God was White or Black, whereupon the father answered He was neither White nor Black. The kid then asked if God was male or female. “God is neither male nor female,” came the reply. “You mean God is Michael Jackson?” quipped the kid, in all seriousness. Such was the mystery surrounding Michael Jackson that he defied all categorisation! Before the demise of Jackson, there was the finis of the African crooning diva of near-all-time on 10th November 2008. At 76, Zenzile Miriam Makeba had not only outlived many musicians but had also made a name as the only Grammy Award winning African singer. She can be said to solely have been responsible for putting African music on the world map. Makeba toured the world with the cream of the music jumbos of the 1950s and 1960s like the South African Hugh Masekela, the Americans, Harry Belafonte and Paul Simon, and many other such giants. I can vividly remember humming her 1950s blockbuster that everybody of the time had taken to be their personal acclamation: “Pata Pata”. To this day, I wouldn’t tell you the lyrics of that song and I still sing it the way I sang it those many years ago: “Nakutapa, nakutipa/I fiiiyu pata pata!” You may laugh, but remember that English didn’t ‘visit’ my brain until late in my life. However, having stepped in class before we were hounded out of Rwanda in 1959, I counted myself as ‘civilised’ – or what in Rwanda they called ‘évolué’ (French for ‘evolved’) – and therefore could not sing the ordinary cattle-praising songs that uneducated herdsmen sang when they were leading their cattle home for the evening. Makeba was more than just a singer because she was an authoritative activist against the Apartheid system of South Africa. Makeba’s compatriot and almost-equally great singer had bid the world bye at the hand of the infamous killer-gangs of South Africa. In October of 2007, violent robbers gunned down Lucky Dube and put an end to the silvery voice of one of the best singing Rastafarians in history so far. Dube’s type of melodious, African reggae put him among the superstars of the music industry that the world is not likely to forget in a hurry. In Apartheid South Africa that considered African music to be like what the cat dragged in, his song, “Together As One”, was constantly hosted on Whites’ radio stations. He was 43. Legendary figures that straddled the world of music like colossuses, we’ll always remember you. ingina2@yahoo.co.uk