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The Documentary Podcast

Tuku Music

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.32.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2019

⏱️ 49 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Oliver Mtukudzi was loved by people all over the world for his unique melodies – and by Zimbabweans for the messages of hope contained in his lyrics. There was a huge outpouring of grief when he died on 23 January 2019. His songs spoke out against women who were thrown out of homes when their husbands died, the stigma of HIV/Aids and spoke up for children suffering at the hands of alcoholic, abusive fathers. To the chagrin of some, he steered clear of direct political confrontation with former president Robert Mugabe. But his 2001 song Wasakara, meaning "You Are Too Old", was banned as it was seen as a coded reference to Mugabe. The BBC’s Kim Chakanetsa paints an intimate portrait of one of Africa's musical giants

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Well, I'll give this song. It's called Here Me Lord. In my culture, we can find us singing all night long at the funeral and all day long at a wedding, music is like food. One thing about an African you

0:18.2

beautify the tune so as to diffuse the tension, though you're talking about your pain or anything but it has to be

0:26.2

sweet so that the tension falls away. Oliver Tukundi was one of Africa's greatest musicians. His music was the soundtrack to life in Zimbabwe.

0:45.4

But it resonated far beyond the continent. People felt his songs spoke directly to them.

0:55.0

But it's this neighborhood, Highfields, that has special claim to Tuku. This is where he was born.

1:03.6

Help me it all.

1:05.6

Help me a lord I'm feeling low.

1:08.4

When he was practicing there I was a little girl.

1:10.6

We used to run to the house when he was racing his songs.

1:14.0

It was quite inspiring, a legend, like Bob Malay.

1:19.0

I used to play Tuk music from morning to sunset and when we travel we could play took music in the car playing

1:28.5

to music only. Three large pictures of Tuku have been painted on the wall alongside the main road in the red,

1:40.8

yellow and green of the Zimbabwean flag.

1:44.0

Next to it it says,

1:45.0

Oliver Tukoudzi,

1:47.0

1952 to forever. And around the corner from that colourful tribute there's a row of small single-story houses

2:08.0

with yards full of guava, peach and mango trees.

2:11.0

It's here on 21st Street that Tuku picked up his first guitar.

2:17.0

I used to sit here, right here the corner here on a dust bean and reass all my music there with ever now costing it.

2:25.0

I borrowed from friends.

2:28.0

When I managed to buy my own first guitar,

2:31.0

I kept it next door there, because my father never wanted to see it here.

...

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