When Disco was number one, and DJ Super Deo ruled the night

DAR ES SALAAM: THIS week we lost one of those sounds with the passing of DJ Super Deo, real name Deonatus Kahana, a veteran disc jockey stitched firmly into Dar es Salaam golden disco years.

For decades, he made people dance, sweat, laugh, flirt respectfully and pretend they knew lyrics to songs heard only three minutes earlier.

He was expected to be laid to rest yesterday in Nanaimo, Mwibara, Bunda district, Mara region.

But those who knew the disco era of Dar of the 1980s and 1990s understand this: Super Deo will not travel entirely alone.

Those were the days, ndugu msomaji, when disco was king in Dar es Salaam.

Not assistant king. Not deputy king. Not minister without portfolio. King. The DJ was prime minister, chief justice, commander-in-chief and, depending on the crowd, part-time marriage counsellor.

A discotheque was not a bar that had pushed three tables aside and placed a young man with a laptop near the fridge.

It was an institution. Turntables. Amplifiers. Mixers. Coloured lights. Speakers tall enough to threaten weak buildings.

Cables crossed the floor like snakes attending a seminar. Step on the wrong one and the music died, two hundred dancers turned, and you considered political asylum.

The DJ, therefore, was serious business.

He did not arrive with ten thousand songs inside a flash disk the size of a fingernail.

He carried boxes of vinyl with the tenderness of a mother carrying a newborn.

Some records came from London, Nairobi, America, Zambia or Europe.

Others arrived through an airline; a cousin was told to forget clothes because the suitcase was needed for music.

In many homes, that cousin returned with records, perfume, and exactly one pair of socks.

Super Deo belonged to that generation of musical warriors.

He was associated with the famous New Space 1900 family and played at strongholds such as Vision 1900, Ushirika Club, popularly Margot, and Hotel Continental along Nkrumah Street.

And it was at the YMCA that DJ Super Deo, together with DJ Kalikali and Neagre J, were larger than life with their Sunday Boogie shows that were the best in town for teenagers.

Every disco had loyal supporters.

Changing allegiance was treated almost like crossing from Simba to Young Africans while wearing the wrong jersey.

A man could admire a beautiful young lady at YMCA but refuse to follow her to Mbowe because, according to him, “our DJ is better.”

Super Deo shared that celebrated age with DJ Paul MacGhee, DJ Joe Johnson Holela, DJ Chris Phabby ‘The Lover’, DJ Young Millionaire, DJ Ahmed ‘Mr A’, DJ Luke Joe and many others.

Across town were DJ Kalikali and Neagre Jay, today’s Masoud Masoud at YMCA; DJs Seydou and Jerry Kotto at Mbowe; Choggy Sly and John Peter Pantalakis at Silver Sands.

So were DJ Emperor, aka Joseph Kusaga, within the Clouds family; Bonny Luv, Jesse Malongo, Richie Dillon, DJ Franco “Soferino B” Kabigi, DJ Rico, DJ Cool Joe and others whose weapons were records, not rifles.

Their competition was wonderfully bitter.

Nobody was fighting over followers, likes or blue ticks; Mark Zuckerberg was probably still somewhere refusing to finish his vegetables.

The battle was new music. If Super Deo found a rare record on Friday afternoon, rival DJs wanted its title by Friday evening. They might send a trusted fellow into his disco, pretending to dance while actually conducting musical intelligence.

The agent would stand near the booth, neck bent towards the spinning record, trying to read the label. Experienced DJs scratched or covered labels to frustrate espionage.

A rare record was guarded more carefully than a government secret. Ask for its name, and you might receive an answer with no relationship to the music.

By the time you discovered the truth, the song was famous, the rival disco had lost two weekends, and Super Deo had found another weapon.

There was also the voice.

DJ Kalikali, remembered as one of the finest microphone men of the period, could announce a record in English so polished that some dancers suspected he had arrived directly from the BBC.

Even those who understood only ‘Ladies and gentlemen’ nodded intelligently. Nobody wanted to expose themselves.

They are gone, but their contribution must not disappear with them.

And before anyone says disco was only imported noise, let us remember what else it produced. It gave urban Tanzania confidence to experiment.

DJ Young Kim, real name Abdulhakim Magomelo, helped prepare the ground for our urban sound.

At Motel Villa de Tanzanie Discotheque in Mwananyamala, he organised ‘You Rap Bonanza’ that unearthed Saleh Jabir, whose Swahili version of Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby is remembered as one doorway through which Bongo Flava entered.

At the time, some behaved as if rap could only be performed in American English, preferably with a cap facing in a direction not approved by its manufacturer.

Saleh Jabir proved that Kiswahili could ride the rhythm, carry street humour and speak directly to Tanzanian youth. You could hear Bongo Flava, still a baby, clearing its throat.

Young Kim also organised a national disco-dancing competition at Motel Villa de Tanzanie. The finals were held at Dar es Salaam Institute, with Jenerali Ulimwengu, then Ilala District Commissioner, as chief guest.

This was proof that even the government had accepted disco dancing as a matter of national importance.

The winner was Black Moses, a dancer whose movements seemed negotiated separately by every part of his body. When he entered the floor, knees, shoulders, neck and feet operated like independent government departments which, for once, were all cooperating.

As we mourn Super Deo, let us also salute the veteran DJs still with us: DJ Richie Dillon, Jerry Kotto, DJ Seydou, Luke Joe, DJ JD, Bonny Luv, DJ Ommy, DJ Mackay and their surviving colleagues.

They deserve applause while they can still hear it, and not only after someone has formed a memorial committee with three treasurers, two vice-chairpersons and one very serious man carrying a file.

Thank you, gentlemen, for the funk, soul, reggae, disco, rap, R&B, Congolese rhythms and slow numbers that suddenly made energetic dancers search for partners.

Thank you for turning YMCA, Ushirika, Mbowe, Motel Agip, New Africa Hotel, Silver Sands, Msasani Beach Club, Villa de Tanzania, Bilicanas, Mambo Club, Pink Coconut, TAZARA club and many other venues into kingdoms of sound.

Today Disco has not died. It has moved into lounges, rooftops, beach bars, neighbourhood clubs, festivals and private parties.

Today’s DJ carries a mighty library on a laptop and can find a requested song in seconds. Technology has made the work faster.

But speed is not the same as soul.

The old discotheque, with its fierce loyalties and largerthan-life resident DJ, is becoming history. Today people follow a fashionable venue, a social-media clip or a location pin.

In the old days, they followed the DJ. If Super Deo moved, his crowd moved. If Seydou had new music, people found him. If Kalikali took the microphone, dancers listened.

The building housed the disco; the DJ carried its soul. That is what young people may miss when they think music is only a playlist. A playlist can arrange songs. A true DJ arranges memories.

Bunda has now received one of those souls. And somewhere, if memory has a dance floor, DJ Super Deo is still cueing the next record, smiling at the crowd and reminding us that when disco was king, he did not merely play the music.

He ruled the night.

That is why ‘We’re Number One’ by the South African group The Winners will always remain both his favourite and the best. Search for it to know why….

¡Adiós, Amigo, Súper Deo!