Zuchu era feels Donna Summer’s love

IT was in 1977 when Donna Summer hit radio airwaves with ‘I Feel Love’, and its impact has remained in East Africa to date.

Her vocal style in I Feel Love looked very heavenly, but the groove that accompanied it was seen as hellish to the then music lovers.

The arrival of I Feel Love and its weird groove baffled Tanzanian musicians in the late 1970s and 80s as it looked strange in their ears for it lacked a human pulse.

“What is it? Queried Polisi Jazz guitarist Kassim Mapili, but there was none then to provide him with an appropriate answer.

Zahir Ally Zoro, who steered Kimulimuli Jazz to skyhigh success as a lead singer and rhythm guitarist, when approached for an explanation on the kind of instrument that supported I Feel Love, also seemed dumbfounded.

“ I don’t know, but I think it is a rhythm guitar from the way it supports the music’s rhythm section,” he said after a long pause.. While adored by youth and students all over East Africa the arrival of ‘I Feel Love; was sad news to band and session musicians.

Their fear was confirmed soon afterward when I Feel Love and other contemporary hits of the era ushered in the Disco Craze and that signed the beginning to an end of the Band Music era.

After I Feel Love, Donna Summer came with a series of hits that at the end labelled her Bad Girl with Hot Stuff and she seemed to tell her piers ‘Dim All the Lights.

After a long period, Newsweek magazine broke the ice on I Feel Love and explained in detail its inner mechanism. In bold it said the groove style that backed Donna Summer’s eponymous hit was called Electronic Rub A Dub Dub being a work of Moog Synthesisers co-manned by Giorgio Moroder, and Pete Bellotte. Rub a Dub style was not new since it was dully explained in the late 1970s by Bob Marley’s Coming in From the Cold, hence Donna Summer’s Electronic Rub A Dub was machine-made innovation.

To music analysts, I feel Love engineered disco sensuality and the synthesiser revolution that also helped lay a path for synthesiser pop, electro, house, techno, and more, influencing generations of pop, rock, and dance artists along the way.

Donna Summer was not alone in pioneering the reign of Disco Craze; Tina Turner who died very recently, was among the widely followed American Dadaz (Sisters) who pioneered Disco era in East Africa along together Gloria Gaynor, Diana Ross, Chaka Khan and Evelyne Champagne King. Her smash hit What’s Love Got to Do with It was adored in East Africa during the Radio days.

Tina Turner temporarily sidelined the Moog Synthesiser as her smash hit brought on stage Yamaha DX7 whose arrival removed the Moog synthesiser in East Africa as the instrument later became readily available in the East African market.

In 1987, Yamaha DX7 won huge acclaim after the Japanese synthesiser supported Mori Kante’s smash hit Yeke Yeke.

As Mori Kante’s hit intensified Disco Craze and so did the Yamaha DX7. The impact of the Disco craze was devastating, in Nairobi, the de facto capital of East and Central African music became very unfriendly to Rumba and Zaire/Congo music.

“Nairobi has ceased to be friendly to us as disco craze has taken everything there,” noted Twikale wa Twikale, who was forced to quit Les Mangelepa and move to Dar es Salaam after band music seemed to have collapsed.

Twikale wa Twikale said it was in the early 1990s that he came to Tanzania to look for a greener pasture. “Disco has made life unbearably tough for us,” he told the writer at the Mwenge area in Dar es Salam.

The synthesizer was talk of modern music then and Orchestra Toma Toma led by Timmy Thomas brought the first synthesiser to Tanzanian music fans in the early 1990s.

Though it didn’t serve as a guiding rhythm, Timmy Thomas played the synthesiser as a fanfare as it was depicted in Standi ya Basi, Stella, or Baba Kalee. It was synthesiser-governed music everywhere in East Africa from simple 4/4 disco music in the later 1970s to the whole 1990s.

The story remains the same today when electronic ecstasy which looked a big threat to band music and proto-rhumba variations, has become a driving force in creating, Takeu, Bongo Flavor and Genge styles.

East African youths like others elsewhere couldn’t resist the disco waves as the music was simple and hypnotising as opposed to the energetic funky soul earlier performed by American idol, James Brow.

“Disco songs are very simple; look similar to many children anthems across Africa,” echoed a disco fan at Msasani Beach Club, one of the popular discotheques in Dar es Salaam in 1985.

It’s common 4/4 beat and simple messages made disco music acceptable in Bantuspeaking Africans since it involved a common call–and– response style that can allow a 1-2 or 1-2- 1-2 or 1-2-3-4 dancing steps as opposed to James Brown’s energetic and sweaty dance governed by Jimmy Nolen’s scratchy guitar.

Sheba Doo and Boogaloo also emerged during the disco craze as demonstrators of the break dance, a subgenre whose chief practitioners in East Africa included King Jobiso from Mombasa who challenged the reign of the then top dancers; Black Moses(Musa Simba) Super Ngedere, Elly Baucha Nico Scaba from Tanzania.

East and Central African bands didn’t let the disco craze take them without a fight and though they looked like sporadic battles, there were some notable changes in the whole setup.

The dance music bands began to shrug off rhumba elements in trying to add American flavours in trying to win back the youthful fans who looked too glued to the madein- America tastes. Bima Lee added a soccacalypso bassline in their Baba Shani hit.

In the same era, Polisi Jazz released Halima a hit whose bassist Bosco Mfundili and sax virtuoso Jalala Ally injected funky tinges, like the way guitarist Jimmy Nolen and bassisst Bootsy Collins did in James Brown’s seminal hits. Kenyan Might Cavalier did the best Swahili Funk in Dunia ina Mambo as Mwenge Jazz released Carolina.

By the mid-1990s dance music dominion was over and synthesiser-governed music took over and this can be mirrored by the legendary disco hit; Staying Alive by Bee Gees.

Those who stayed alive now reaps the benefits, Moog synthesiser which in the past seemed to be a scary monster to the session and band musicians, has become a big fortune to the present generation as depicted through the sky-high success stamped by both Bongo Flava and Genge artistes.

The magic hands of Moroder and Bellotte in Moog Synthesiser brought misery to sax virtuosi, guitar pyrotechnicians and trumpet whizzkids as their sounds are easily obtained in synthesiser.

Guitar is rarely heard in today’s music and it has been applied in rare occasions. Ali Kiba is the only Bongo Flava megastar who still cherishes guitar tonnes in most of his recent and past hits while his rival Diamond Platinumz in his eponymous hit, Moyo Wangu, there a suave sound of alto saxophone accompanies the song.

The mainstay of the synthesiser fostered solo artistry as opposed to Msondo Ngoma and Mlimani Park era in which a band relied on about 20 musicians on three trumpets, two alto saxophones, a tenor sax, trombone, four guitarists(lead, second solo, rhythm, and bass guitars), four vocalists and sometimes four dancers.

Donna Summer and Tina Turner who died recently, though unknown to the majority of fans of the new generation music, have influenced thousands upon thousands, directly or indirectly. Now East African ladies’ voice in both pain and joy can be heard through Zuhura Othman(Zuchu), Faustine Mfinanga(Nandy), Victoria Kimani, Judith Wambura(Lady JD), Juliana Kanyomozi, Maua Sama, Ray C, Mwasiti.

As this list proves, the most influential female musicians often create genres of their own. They are inspirational, idiosyncratic, iconic – and absolutely majestic.

Miguel Suleyman is Tanzanian ethnomusicologist based in Dar es Salaam .