Daiton Somanje the New Mukadota

I bought a DVD with a collection of songs by Daiton Somanje and Pengaudzoke. It is a gem, if you are into Zimbabwean music. The music and dancing are superb, with none of the frills you get from the likes of Lilly Allen, Amy Winehouse even Kanye West. In my opinion Daiton is the successor to Mukadota. I wish someone would give him the opportunity to display the array of talent that he has. In the DVD, the man's brilliant comedian talents flash to the surface.

Daiton and Pengaudzoke sing and dance for real. Anywhere else but Zimbabwe, these guys would be very rich. I can imagine them on the David Letterman's Late Show or NBC Today Show. The kabhasikoro dance would make them an instant hit. My teenage son has been rivetted by Penngaudzoke. A fan of Kanye West and Amy Winehouse, he said, "It is not right that Amy is a millionaire who does nothing but moo and scratch herself while performing but genuine singers like Daiton are scrapping at the bottom of the barrel. Daiton is better than Kanye, too."

When things get to normalcy in Zimbabwe, let us hope and pray that these highly talented guys get their due reward. In the meantime it is important to make sure that we do not cheat them by burning their CDs and DVDs. Every time we do that we are taking food from their tables, stripping off clothes from their children’s backs and also depriving them of medicine. For these reasons alone, I do not burn my CDs for anyone.

We need to support our own whenever possible. I ran into a Zimbabwean gym instructor who wanted to know if I had any South African music CDs. He wanted to use them for his aerobics class. I wanted to know why he wanted South African music when Zimbabwe has very good music that can be used for aerobics class like Mabvi neMagokora by Nicholas Zakaria and the Khiama Boys. He could not give me a straight answer. I do not have anything against South Africans but going for low-quality music from South Africa, like the Zimbabweans of the M’Zansi Jams programme on OBE, in preference to very good Zimbabwean music annoys me. I told the clown he had an inferiority complex. The clown did not like it and I did not really care because I had told him the ugly truth.

He went to a Group A school and is still stuck in that bygone era where they used to say exsir, whatever the hell that word means, as an exclamation mark to every sentence. I went to a Group A school myself but I cannot find that as an excuse of frowning upon my own kind. This is quite common though.

At one time, my friends and I drove three hours to Washington D.C. for a graduation party for Zimbabwean friends. The DJ was playing MC Lyte, Tupac and Biggie Smalls. I went to him and asked for Zimbabwe music. I told him I had just driven from the number one-partying school in America. If I had wanted to listen to Junior Mafia and Tupac, why would I waste three hours on the road when I could just go to the one of the local hip-hop joints?

He started playing Zimbabwean music and everyone, including the exsir brigade that was present, was in a lather as we all joyously celebrated. That was the Zimbabwean spirit and it made me happy.