Rough guide to Kuimba 11

Good people, Black Missionaries have released four singles from their forthcoming album, Kuimba 11.

This is good news for their fans who have endured a long wait. After four years, Special Lover, Umboni, M’busa and Zofuna Mtima Wanga are expected to catalyse excitement among followers of the band founded by fallen reggae star Evison Matafale in 2000.

However, the new singles have stirred a predictable backlash from nostalgic fans of the project Matafale started on his return from his destitution in Zimbabwe in 1999.

Move on. Matafale is no more. So is Musamude Fumulani, who took over after the founder’s death in police custody.

It appears Matafale’s fans are not exactly impressed with the new songs.

The Blacks are neither building on Matafale’s legacy nor  improving on Musamude’s attempts to carry on the ‘black man’s mission’.

The four tracks show the band does not care about your appetite for serious reggae music. They are drifting back to khunju, the beat the late Robert Fumulani, the father of Musamude, Anjiru, Chizondi and Musamude, fashioned and popularised.

For the Chileka-based group, it will never be easy to fill the giant shoes willed to them by their legendary forerunners.

An opinion is gaining sway that the recording, mixing and instrumentation of the new singles  are below par and monotonously familiar.

It is hard to disagree.

The taste of the pudding is in the eating, so do not judge the forthcoming album based on just four single .

But each track tells a story.

On Zofuna Mtima Wanga, the most replayed of them all, Anjiru sounds orphaned on the vocals. His voice cries for companionship and some density.  More voices would have made the track captivating and better.

The love theme is great and nothing new. The Blacks are in love with romantic songs and they will not divorce this theme soon. They have a way to please lovers of their music, especially ladies starved of men who will go to any extent to show the spark.

The instruments sounds are something staunch fans of the Blacks have ever heard before, except they are scanty, slow and mashed this time. The lead guitarist went on holiday when he was needed most­—much to the chagrin of those who fondly remember the electric handiwork of Takudziwani Chokani who dumped the Blacks to revive Matafale’s first band, Wailing Brothers.

The bassist too was on a go-slow. It appears the band has cliched the keys and chords that Peter Amidu, the most exhilarating bass guitarist in the country, no longer feels challenged to do better.

Elsewhere, trumpets, shakers and other ‘small’ instruments our musicians often take for granted make reggae tasty. These could have added some tasty meat to the bare bone as the four  tracks sound like work in progress.

If you were waiting for a signal that the band is not going forward reggae-wise, you only need to repeat Umboni, a danceable imitation of Robert Fumulani’s Mulomo which the band redid several years back.

This only brings to light the Blacks’ silent struggle with their history and modernity, a want to preserve the legacy of their heroes and the zeal to move on.

The new tracks resoundingly confirm that they have successfully moved past the Matafale and Musamude eras–and reggae lovers need to adjust accordingly, for too much expectation is hazardous.

On Special Lover,  gifted keyboardist Chizondi takes to the mic in a follow-up to Mr Bossman, a cousin of Morgan Heritage’s Link Up, which made Kuyimba 10 worth listening.

However, Chizo is hugely let down by sloppy players of instruments who sound too shy to dictate the beat. They follow lazily.

Typical of the post-Musamude era,  the other tracks are Anjiru as usual. The Blacks band leader has been on the song so long that nearly everything he sings is hastily dismissed as more of the same ole stuff.

Being Anjiru is a calling to improve his act all the time. The fans of the band he leads expect the best, always.

His success is clear in that the Blacks keep attracting  huge crowds Matafale never lured until his burial at Singano Village in Chileka.

But the band’s downfall is in the numbers that attend their shows because there is no other Black Missionaries or decent competitors. These get bored and drop out as monotony creeps in.

Let Kuimba 11 be the game changer Ma Blacks fans have been waiting for. n