LONG READ: “The Sound Has Changed!” Cry Pundits Who Called for ZimDancehall Sound to Change

 By Intertwined-Zimbabwe

HARARE, ZIMBABWE; AND BERLIN, GERMANY – “If you call this ZimDancehall, you may need to get checked!” These are the incendiary words that a prominent cultural critic - the vital but contradictory head honcho of the burgeoning platform Ear-on-the-Speaker-Zw - screamed and bellowed upon hearing Killer T’s new sizzling Sungura-Afropop-And-Unknown-Kanindo-influenced smash hit ‘Hakete.’

Snapshot of Killer T's 'Hakete' YouTube music video. Image sourced from the randomness of the interwebs' search engines.

This is despite the precedent of the same critic leading the charge against the genre’s perceived resistance to change.  His contradictions (expressed primarily via the Digital Streets Wherein the Social meets the Media, notably Facebook, and to a lesser extent the bird app Twitter) in demanding an urgent evolution of the ZimDancehall sound, for an organically distinctive original Zim sound free from Jamaica/Caribbean copycatism, yet at the same time humorously but seriously denouncing the same evolution as expressed by the former dem-po-po-po-po-po-po Matapi Zion chanter Killer T, are spectacularly incredible. 

The contradictions are unparalleled, par-excellence. The Reporters, as such, delved into a tremendously deep excursion of investigative journalism to get to the bottom of this ZimDancehall evolutionary sound-change phenomenon; a bulwark against the conventionally misguided tropes of Jamaica/Caribbean copycatism. 

(The Ear-on-the-Speaker-Zw boss, who incited the notion that Killer T's Hakete is not ZimDancehall, is alleged by other non-musical and musical gatekeepers of the genre that he sometimes exudes the uncanny habit of revelling in such contradictions. Probably another classic case of the legendary ‘svoto’ or ‘finhu’: just like a certain political party that rules the teapot-shaped country with a bronze and silver fist, ZIFA, the Warriors, and/or the Chevrons. We digress. Apologies.)

Announcing itself as a distinct, stubborn, parent-hated, and Christian-and-Hegemony-hated genre of urban music in the mid 2000s, ZimDancehall became arguably the most eminent genre (and certainly among the perennially misguided & truant urban youth) over the course of the 2010s.

Throughout its turbulent existence, it has come under a myriad of scathing, disingenuous, and often fake-deep criticisms. In predictable cases of extremism, this baseless bashing and slander exercise that ZimDancehall is ruthlessly subjected to, often without context and nuance, has come from Christianity, Parents, and Hegemony; this ominous three-pronged arch-nemesis really hates ZimDancehall, its chanters & producers, as well as its loyal and fickle fans alike. 

While most of the criticism has come from the moral police who fault the music for its perceived vices and societal decadence (conveniently forgetting that the debauchery and decay that the Dancehall kids sing about reigned supreme way before the proliferation of the genre – but again, we digress), the frequently recurrent condemnation of its sound has been, “It’s simply ripped off Jamaican Dancehall music!”

With the genre experiencing tumults as well as a slight dip in popularity in recent years, the self-positioned and crudely hegemonic cultural polymaths have diagnosed this very [stubborn] insistence on retaining the Caribbean influence of the music (also known as copycatism) as the dominant cause of waning popularity — and not, maybe, just a result of the same goddamn cyclical nature of the arts that affects just about any music, nay, cultural trend. Vapid or with substance. 

Some arm-chair non-musical experts (in their purported polemic and/or apologetic rants of diagnosing ZimDancehall's fucked up problem with an attendant panacea), attribute this slight popularity dip mainly due to the immensely saddening and untimely demise of its selfless revolutionary iconoclast popularly known in ZimDancehall parlance as Sauro or Ngwendeza. 

But such lazy intellectual apologetics are terribly flimsy; as The Reporters have unearthed in a ground-breaking investigation conducted on the actual ground, this shaky and unfounded lazy intellectual argument is flimsy because non-mainstream ZimDancehall chanters & producers have kept the torch alive. 

The Reporters also discovered, with tremendous perplexity, that some of the moral police are ostensibly dizzied by the lofty heights of the high ground. 

Perhaps heeding this criticism or, more likely, allowing the music to evolve organically as the years have passed, many of the prominent artists within ZimDancehall have now created a sound/sounds—or rather, a conflated potpourri of sounds— that are distinctive to either the genre or themselves. Harare's extrication from Kingston's ReggaeDancehall, Dub, and Soca. This new ZimDancehall sound, which is passionately loved and pushed vociferously by hardcore mainstream adherents (listeners, media practitioners, Editors, and non-musical academics and gatekeepers), is largely and conspicuously unrecognizable when played alongside its Jamaican Dancehall counterparts. The new ZimDancehall sound, which does not sound like copycatism-clogged original ZimDancehall, radically differs from Bob Marley's likkle-but-wi-tallawah ReggaeDancehall sound of the Caribbean island of Jamaica.

The Reporters, in a thoroughly in-depth investigative journalistic drive that left no stone literally unturned, strenuously uncovered that the predictable innovators of this new sound [akin to bubblegum-chewing auditory jaw-waves] include the enviable likes of Killer T, Enzo Ishall, Freeman, Jah Signal, Chillspot Records, and Seh Calaz, but to a lesser, reasonable extent. They portend, but most importantly materialize, the much-vaunted evolution of ZimDancehall. 

This predictable coterie of evolutionary sonic innovators has integrated elements of Sungura, Jiti, Kanindo, Rhumba, hazy Pop, and other regional sounds such as the nascent Amapiano into their music (sonic scientists in Johannesburg and Bloemfontein confirmed when Amapiano is played non-stop the whole day, the eardrum and mental faculties of an individual become severely and dangerously irritated). This integration of distinct sounds happens as if the innovators, currently led by Killer T, want to spiritedly beat A-Level Math students solving Integration problems. 

(Which is painfully insignificant in the cosmos' grand scheme of things; as long as the sonic innovators led by Kelvin Kusikwenyu [Killer T's real name] deviate from the shackles of alleged Caribbean copycatism, ZimDancehall might be given another 7-year lease of life. A 99-year lease of life is highly unlikely because of unrestrained commercialization of mainstream ZimDancehall. The same disease that seems to afflict the genre's misunderstood sibling called Zim Hip Hop.)

Even the most iconic flag bearer and unrivalled luminary of ZimDancehall – Winky D; who, at some point during the genre's nostalgic peak, faced fiery competition from Ngwendeza aka Sauro; although they rightly and immediately made peace that was infused with profound mutual respect via a Deed of Settlement signed between Vigilance and Conquering – even Winky D has dropped monster hits that look and sound more at home on an 80s movie soundtrack than Jamaican Dancehall. All in spirited, innovative attempts to avoid allegations of Caribbean copycatism hindering organic ZimDancehall evolution. 

The consensus among arm-chair or non-musical intellectual academics and gatekeepers is that Winky D seems to be doing this ZimDancehall sound-change better than the others (read Killer T, especially). 

The Reporters have it on credible authority that reportedly, only musical intellectual academics, nay gatekeepers, such as University of Zimbabwe's Fred Zindi, are the remaining voice of reason; musical experts who actually stepped into the studio and made music and distributed it while upholding tremendous journalism, writing, lecturing, policy and institutional advocacy, and in-depth/contextual understanding of Zimbabwean music in its holistic entirety. 

In an odd but not entirely surprising case of lacking a pivot, the non-musical gatekeepers of the [pseudo-beloved yet much-maligned] genre have been utterly flabbergasted by the very evolution for which they clamoured.

They say the deviation from Caribbean copycatism, that has brought in this Kanindo-type evolution in ZimDancehall which they have been crying for since time immemorial, is strangulating their beloved genre.

“With all these changes, it is safe to say ‘ZimDancehall is dead!” said one Editor of an unscrupulous popular music blog at the Emergency Digital and Social Meeting of the Arts & Entertainment and Media in Zimbabwe disseminated from Germany. As well as from Austria, Hungary, and Britain. 

When asked to clarify about their [the non-musical gatekeepers of the genre] earlier comments calling for an urgent evolution,  the Editor of the unscrupulous popular music blog hastily added, “We wanted it to change…but also not change at the same time. I don't know, does it make sense?”

At press time, the displeased crowd in the Meeting was being pointed to the principled likes of Silent Killer, Blot, Dobba Don, Dadza D, Hwindi President, Kinnah, DJ Inno [Chino neChino], I-Ratty, Mobstar & Feego [Royal Dynasty Records], Fire King, Malon T, Oskid, Gzzy, Guspy Warrior, and Master H, whose sound has retained much of the earlier original essence of perceived real ZimDancehall.

The Reporters also discovered, with the highest degree of confidence, that unlike the above fickle sonic innovators earlier on mentioned herein, this coterie of perceived principled and real ZimDancehall chanters is facing unfounded claims and allegations of kupera, kusarira, and being one-or-two-three-hit-wonders. In the Global North, this slander exercise may be referred to as being cancelled.

Like Goldilocks displeased with the bear’s porridge at different temperatures, the non-musical cultural critics and faux intellectuals and other chanters & producers were up in arms again, declaring that their inability to evolve would be the death of their careers and ZimDancehall, yet the genre refuses to die; it will not succumb to nefarious provisional death sentences.

Our Chief Foreign Arts & Entertainment and Media correspondent, Shingai-Hama Paul Hunter (based in Berlin, Germany) for The Reporters, who was clearly befuddled by this debilitatingly vexing debacle, ended the Meeting (in which Qounfuzed quipped that the genre is not confused) by posing an incendiary yet amorphous inquiry to the so-called non-musical experts and gatekeepers. 

“Which is it? Should the genre evolve with time, or stay the same? Like, if we’re to quote thee legendary Mungoshi, ‘walking still’ type of vibes?”

To which they swiftly replied with a boldly emphatic and aptly amorphous “Yes!”

xxxxx

NOTA BENE [NB]: The Supreme Editor of Intertwined-Zimbabwe notes, with the highest reverence for tremendous journalistic standards and professional ethics (like those unwaveringly upheld by The Reporters), that the Editor of the unscrupulous popular music blog desires an in-depth face-to-face interview with Intertwined-Zimbabwe to clarify certain issues falling in the amorphous grey area.