This collaboration project brings together some of Zimbabwe’s most talented musicians. It is a microcosm of our country: black and white, Shona and Ndebele, female and male. The music is a testimony to our diversity, through its fusion of styles, languages and voices... please take a listen ·
It was 3 years ago that, with a rapidly deteriorating economy in Zimbabwe, and the flight of performing artists out of the country, we decided to bring together what might be called “the best of the rest” and look for new ways to enhance the music biz in Zim and find ways to promote our music to as close to an international level as possible.
Our first year was spent preparing material for a project under the banner “The Collaboration” - each member of the group is basically aligned to their own band and we encouraged the artists to pursue their own career as well as to participate in the project - what we ended up with was the album “Hupenyu Kumusha/Life at Home/Impilo eKhaya” which is an amalgamation of ideas from the contributors and features a variety of styles and grooves from Afropop to Zimjazz.
The album was launched in 2006 and a string of live performances followed, culminating in an appearance on the main stage during the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA).
The track Urombo (as featured on Sellaband and the above album) is a traditional Shona song (done earlier by Thomas Mapfumo) that we have revamped. A remix was released in Nov 06 on the Revolution/Universal album ‘4 U’ - , the album was nominated for a South African Music Award (SAMA). The track talks of the poverty of life alone and the need to continue to strive and to work together.
We continue to promote the grouping and our most recent performances have been at the Sauti za Busara Festival in Zanzibar and at Chimanimani Festival here in Zim.
The spin off of this album has been the recording and promotion of other groups of whom members of The Collaboration are party to.
Our latest release “Malaisha” from Busi Ncube and band Rain is starting to gain interest - I was in Norway recently to promote a tour for the group later in the year - this follows their appearance at Mela Festival in Oslo in 2006.
Busi is a founder member of legendary Zimbabwean band Ilanga - featuring Andy Brown, the late Don Gumbo, Busi and Keith Farquharson the group were leaders in the Afro fusion genre and produced a string of local hits.
Busi sings in 6 languages and her distinctive style has made her a firm favorite in Zimbabwe - she also plays mbira and percussion.
We have also recorded material for Zimjazz trio Too Open, and have a couple of other projects at various stages of recording.
My efforts to promote our music have led to my attending Womex (Spain 2006) and also a visit to Scandinavia and UK to promote tours. We send the albums to World Music review sites, promote to festival organizers and make contacts with similar minded people whom we might collaborate with.
Recently we provided 5 bands, and a clown, to the Chimanimani Festival - here in Zimbabwe. This is a rural festival aimed at agro-industry workers, their families and other people in the area. It was last held in 2003, when it was real popular with tourists (yes we remember them too) and Harare folk, but it came unstuck through the prevailing situation - we helped to revive it with a memorable show and expect that it will now be back on the Zimbabwean festival circuit (OK so now there are 2) on an annual basis PLUS the festival trust will be reviving their rural artist development outreach program once they reestablish ties with interested donors.
We are pleased to be associated with Sellaband and to actively seek believers for us to record The Collaboration Vol 2 - so far we are real pleased with the response and we hope to find more believers along our path.
The tunes we have put up are “Urombo” and “Abadala” - the latter is about respecting ones elders and the opening chant is sung in Hebrew by Charles Summerfield, whilst Busi Ncube adds the female lead vocals.
We wanna tour the world and bring our groove with us - Watch this space.
Stevie Sparx
The Collaboration album sleeve has the following to say: “Hupenyu Kumusha’s music is a metaphor for conscious people’s collective search for spiritual fulfillment as opposed to the ultimately unfulfilling individualistic pursuit of material gratification. We believe that the world must start looking towards the cultures of the so called “third world” as solid examples, rather than as helpless, curious and primitive aberrations. This world is our home. Our dreams and aspirations are universal and we can only achieve them together. One world. One family. And our family must start thinking in terms of global solidarity instead of global competition. If we do, life at home can only get better for all of us.
Please visit
http://thulani.net for information on events, and live Shows. Our recent Journey to Zanzibar was a Great Success.
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