‘Bitoz’ brighten Bongo Flava era while heavy metal still on wild goose chase

DAR ES SALAAM: IT’S September, the peak of the after-harvest season all over East Africa. It’s festival season, brightly coloured with wedding ceremonies, music fiestas and live band concerts.

It was a pleasant evening at the Tanzanite Hall in Kimara Korogwe, one of the vibrant outskirts located about 12km west of Dar es Salaam city centre, when “Amenitengeneza’’ by Martha Mwaipaja, “Yesu Yuko Hapa” by Christopher Mwahangila and Zabron Singers’ “Sweetie Sweetie” rotationally filled the hall’s airwaves during a colourful wedding ceremony involving members of affluent families.

Also known as “Baada ya Ndoa”, “Sweetie Sweetie” is Swahili gospel-Afropop celebrated for its joyous rhythm and uplifting lyrics dedicated to newlyweds and the sanctity of marriage.

Also, extremely popular during that wedding was the Zabron Singers mega-hit, including “Mkono Wa Bwana”, a deeply celebratory and spiritual track, often accompanying the couple’s entrance into the reception.

Drama began after Christian Bella-Ommy Dimpo’s collaboration, “Nani Kama Mama”, finished singing praises of the bride’s mother, when two youths stood up and requested the event’s MC to play them Heavy Metal music, which strangely sounded like ‘heavy mero’ in their American accent.

Everyone there was dumbfounded and the MC was speechless.

In his two-decade experience as an MC, Heavy Metal music has never been on any of his wedding ceremonies’ menus.

After a brief consultation with one of the family members, the MC told the audience that he would play Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” because he didn’t have any music from Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen or Dimebag Darrell requested by the been-to-America youth.

“Black or White” looked like a genuine selection because of the participation of Guns N’ Roses rock guitarist, Slash (Saul Hudson), in Michael Jackson’s live performances.

As a popular hit that has global acceptance, the audience joined the been-to-America youth on the dance floor since the hit was also very popular in Tanzania in the early 1990s.

“If the MC had Joe Satriani’s song, like “Surfing with Aliens”, one of the best Heavy Metal hits, no one could stand up and dance. Heavy Metal is not danceable,” said Mr Jonathan Kiwia, one of the couple’s parents with a vast knowledge of American popular genres from Jazz, Rock’n Roll, Soul, Funk to RnB.

The comments from Heavy Metal fans on Joe Satriani’s “Surfing with Aliens” on YouTube seem to break the ice on why the genre holds low esteem in African countries like Tanzania.

A fan who signed as Bill the Fifth tabled this comment: “This is probably my favourite piece of guitar music ever written. What an incredible musician and a badass piece.” “I live for the day when, during a Satriani concert, Satriani makes a bend with wah effect and then he points at me,” added.

Emngaiden. Michael Perry wrote: “Skills: 10/10 Wah: 10/10 Guitar Faces: 10/10.” “Satriani is not surfing with the alien. He is the alien and you’re surfing with him!” commented Demoon 222 Russ Clark joined with this comment: “His command and control of harmonics never cease to impress me.

Satch is the man. “His guitar asked for a sandwich and a glass of milk, smoked a cigarette and took a 15-hour nap after this,” Hawk intergrader. Henning Tacey’s comment went even further: “And this. Is why. We all. Are surfing. With Him. Proven here. God’s Guitarist. Anthony777-7 came along with, “3:34 Guitar screaming Wow!”

Heavy metal is just a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s, influenced by guitarist Jimi Hendrix, whose sound is characterised by distorted guitars, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats and loudness, according to David Nhigula, a Tanzanian guitarist who spent his youth in England, Japan and India.

He says it is most often guitar showmanship and stage wizardry, but the genre is not dance-friendly like Funky, soul, or Rnb performed by black Americans.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s debut album, Are You Experienced (1967), was also highly influential.

Hendrix’s virtuosic technique would be emulated by many metal guitarists and the album’s most successful single, “Purple Haze”, is identified by some as the first heavy metal hit.

“This is the new soul music, the synthesis of white blues and heavy metal rock,” the 7 September 1968 edition of the Seattle Daily Times, reviewer Susan Schwartz wrote.

She said the Jimi Hendrix Experience “has a heavy-metal blues sound”. And from then on the name heavy metal became the name of the genre.

“Heavy metal” emerged partially from acid rock, “acid rock” and was often used interchangeably with “heavy metal” and “hard rock”.

Still, despite seeming alien to the present-day generation of Tanzania, rock music’s influence has left its footprints in Tanzania and many parts of Africa south of the Sahara Desert.

The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix are visible today in the era of Bongo Flava, Amapiano and Afrobeat.

The Beatles, the English group that became the most successful and influential pop-rock act was known for gritty blues-infused anthems and legendary live longevity.

It’s still baffling why Tanzania didn’t embrace rock and its variants despite having its envoy, Freddie Mercury of Queen fame.

Under Mercury’s leadership, Queen combined operatic grandeur with theatrical rock performance.

Freddie Mercury, a Tanzanian from Zanzibar, is renowned as one of the greatest rock lead singers in history for his vocal range and stage presence.

The Beatles are still in Tanzanian music today and you can see them in Diamond Platnumz, Harmonize, Rayvanny, Marioo or Mbosso as ‘Bitozi’.

The Bitozi, from the Beatles, refers to the elegant youth adept with town fashion, music and they have been in the Tanzanian music scene since the late 1960s.

The extremely colourful ‘African Bitoz’ would sometimes take Jimmy Hendrix look, as depicted in later appearances of Afrobeat, Bongo Flava and Amapiano megastars.

While stage appearance still cherishes the Beatles’ smartness or Hendrix’s dazzling wear, Rock or Heavy Metal guitar has been solely a guitarist’s affair across Africa.

“Most African guitarists learn how to play Rock or Heavy Metal guitar style, but that can’t be played in our band’s music. It is exclusively personal,” explained Ibambi Okombi Rogassien (Rogaroga) when Extra Music toured Tanzania in 1998 to promote their Etat Major album.

In it, Rogaroga added overdrive sound effects to his guitar, but the song remained danceable as its call-andresponse rhythm remained intact. Congolese guitarist Caen Madoka, who also came to Tanzania to support King Kester Emeneya’s tour also admitted that rock guitar style has no market in Congo and other parts of Africa.

“We Africans love dancing, but that can’t be achieved without rhythm. “Since rock guitar dwells on harmony, it has never been popular in Bantu-speaking Africa whose music strictly adheres to a call-and-response rhythm,” he noted.

ALSO READ: It’s Fender Precision bass all over as Bongo Flava sees a stairway to heaven

It is this fact that makes Vai, Satriani and other heroes of rock guitar like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page or Eddie Van Halen remain unnoticed in Africa.

Through Jimi Hendrix, however, many African guitarists embraced his wah-wah pedal; they adapted from his “Purple Haze” song, but its usage didn’t stay long in the scene.

Most popular African hits that glorified sound effects include Manu Dibango’s “Super Kumba”. In it, guitarist Sim Pezin applied a wah-wah pedal.

Later came “Aon Aon” by Tabu Ley, whose guitarist, Mavatiku Visi Michelino, armed his Fender Stratocaster guitar with a wah-wah pedal sound effect.

In Tanzania, Patrick Balisidya’s “Tausi” is a fine example of wah-wah pedal work. However, the classic, distortion-heavy Western metal style remains a minority pursuit across the continent.

This is not due to a lack of technical ability, but rather a preference for distinct musical, structural and cultural traditions.

Africans give rhythm priority over European harmonic weight.

Traditional African guitar styles adhere to percussive elements of traditional instruments such as xylophone, thumb piano (marimba) and drums.

Most mainstream African music is fundamentally tied to social dancing. The aggressive, linear headbanging or mosh-pit energy of heavy metal does not align with the polyrhythmic, hip-swaying dance cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Heavy metal carries a historical, Western subcultural association with the occult or anti-religious themes. In deeply religious African societies (both Christian and Islamic), heavy distortion and aggressive vocals are often viewed with scepticism, pushing the genre completely underground.

High-gain tube amplifiers, distortion pedals and heavy-duty audio production setups are expensive and less accessible in many regional markets compared to portable digital keyboards or clean-running solid-state amps.