HARARE - Tuku Backstage converses not only with the man’s dreams, successes and adversities but also Tuku’s moral and ethical challenges including the superstar’s hidden secrets.
While writing, I attempted to ensure that everyone who reads the book must find something to take away.
I share the relevance and significance of Tuku’s music in diverse cultures, education, politics, spiritualism and social cohesion.
Part of Tuku’s upbringing, as a young rural boy herding cattle and growing up under traditional culture, helped him collect his identity fairly early in life and that he was special in his own right.
People rise from the village to become great citizens of the world, in the face of all kinds of prejudice and particularly the stereotype that the rural sector is inferior.
Tuku’s cultural identity, in the village, was instrumental in constructing his perspectives on life and influencing his extraordinary themes and melody that we now know as Tuku Music.
A strong traditional culture background helped Tuku develop talent and appreciation of the substance of his mother tongue and richness of his culture and diversity of traditional instruments, beats and dances.
His artistry is not alien but reflects who he is: African.
Whether he is playing in Australia, Canada, Japan or South Africa, his music has been successful in bringing together people from diverse cultures and promoting tolerance of cultural diversity.
The significance of the music, in diverse cultures, is the reason why the music has been accepted in both traditional and contemporary spheres across the world today.
That explains why the American Grammy laureate, Bonnie Raitt chose to do a rendition of Tuku’s “Hear Me Lord”. That is also why Tuku has successfully pollinated his music across the many different shapes and sizes of African compositions as illustrated in his catalogue of collaborations with artists from diverse cultural backgrounds abroad.
When Tuku was growing up, his parents, like mine, and many other families, prescribed academic education because of the notion that it guaranteed decent work. Many families did not value practical music and arts education as equal to academic study.
But if the arts, or music specifically, is organised, it has the potential to turn an ordinary child into an extraordinary person. Tuku is a perfect example.
What Zimbabwe’s education and the community social sector has failed to do for learners and budding artists, Tuku now tries to do at community level at his arts academy called Pakare Paye, in Norton, near Harare, regardless of poor funding for the institute.
The developmental aspect of the academy certainly confirms Tuku’s modest role as an educator.
The relevance and significance of Tuku’s work in education permeates to secondary school level where he mentors students keen to seriously pursue music during his annual two-day solo festival where learners showcase individual talent.
Already we can see Tuku’s role in socio-economic development, in his community, which in time must translate to national gain if Zimbabwe’s policies and governance spare us further rot.
Tuku has reinforced his relevance in education by producing short films, adapted from Shona literature set-books and shown in schools, to complement studies.
He conducts career guidance for secondary learners and gives public lectures at universities. We even had university students pursuing music, coming on attachment for a full year at Tuku’s academy to get the practical feel of the various aspects of music. Other students come to research on Tuku for their dissertation papers.
In Tuku Backstage, I trace the treacherous political journey travelled by the superstar and his relevance and role during Zimbabwe’s pre-independence era right across to independence and post-independence.
Issues of spiritualism and social cohesion come up in my book and articulate why Tuku’s music speaks so eloquently to our individual inner souls and to our societies at large.
Relevance of Tuku’s musicWhile Tuku Backstage, a tell-all book written by Oliver Mtukudzi’s former publicist and veteran journalist, Shepherd Mutamba, shares some of the musician’s sensational hidden secrets, the book also speaks extensively about the relevance of Tuku’s music.
The Daily News has been given exclusive rights by Mutamba to publish a series of extracts from the book to be published before the end of the year.
Readers note that the extracts will not be published over the weekend but will continue from Monday.