Same old jazz: Mablacks akapume?

Jah people, lightning does not strike one place twice.

Without any thunder, let us continue where we stopped last week: Black Missionaries and Kuimba albums are no ordinary brands.

Congratulations on the Blacks for releasing Kuimba 9 at last, but news from the launches sadly indicate that the ‘new album’ is not new in the first place.

This relives the story about recycled beats.

But believing that the taste of the pudding is in the eating, I listened to the CD with the keenness it deserves and found it wanting——a mere rearrangement of recipes and approaches repeated too often to be mistaken for anything new.

Sadly, this is the impression music lovers have endured since the death of Blacks, leader Musamude Fumulani in 2007.

As Anthony Makondetsa’s rebirth shows, human beings have the propensity to improve. However, the Blacks’ stagnation has left many remembering their fallen greats on whose footsteps the remnants fear to tread.

Chronic inertia has narrowed the band’s niceness to singing boy-meets-girl songs and tributes to the dead they should be emulating rather than grieving.

Their shoddy new release completes a sordid portrait of a band that spends too much time touring, with limited time for their studio productions.

The artists may cover up their miserable CD and cassette sales by intensifying live performances, but both subsist on a bulk of new relevant hits that are sublime and exciting in nature.

The Blacks are top performers—albeit in the absence of realistic competitors and substitutes.

Yet the law of diminishing marginal returns shows that there comes a time when even the most profitable enterprise stagnates and declines. I shudder to think that the Blacks’ appeal and originality is already in free fall.

Despite the profitability of gigs, art is first and foremost an expression of talent. Having dished out free CDs at the doorstep to patrons who may never have bought Kuimba 9 after a thorough review, the Blacks must go back to the drawing board and put their act in order.

The fans tired of getting the never-ending shows and flops, they want something new or Mablacks akapume!