Those who read this crap, which I refer to as “my column", know that this son of a peasant from the slopes of Mount Kamwala loves music. You, the sceptic reader, will most likely not believe that in my younger days, I was a member of our secondary school’s boy band. I was especially adept with Atomic Jazz Band songs; my rendition of hits such as Stella Yapunguze, Njoo Mpenzi Njoo or Tanzania Yetu ni Nchi Ya Furaha would have given Stephen Hiza a run for his money. That is, we're to share a stage (ahem!).
I prefer live music to the DJ’s stuff any day, but the trouble is, on my side of Dar City, we hardly get bands coming to perform at venues close enough to where I live. However, my wider neighbourhood has a few bars in which karaoke shows are often staged.
Today, they are having a karaoke show at one of my most conveniently situated bars, which, were it not for the management and most of its patrons’ penchant for very loud, nay, very noisy music, would have made it my dearest drinking haunt.
Well, the bar is very noisy this evening, but that is justifiable because there is a karaoke show. It is something close to live band music because you have live individuals taking up the mike and singing for real along the beats of a song whose lyrics have been filtered out. I prefer it to some of these Bongo Flava “live shows” in which what we get on stage is some ridiculously attired fellow, masquerading as a vocalist, simply moving his lips without doing any singing. The voice the audience hears is actually from a tape operated by a pompous DJ. Lip-synching fraud!
I enter the bar and order a beer, drinking from the vantage comfort of the counter. I swing this way and that to the beat of some good old songs. That is what impresses me most, listening to oldies. It amazes me that even youthful patrons who must have been born not earlier than the mid-1990s are getting mesmerised by cover songs of Les Wanyika, Mbaraka Mweshehe Mwaruka, Msondo Ngoma and Dar Jazz. My friend John Kitime would have loved to be in attendance.
I wish I could step forward to the limited dance floor and put my best foot forward, but good sense tells me not to. This bar is too near home, and I assume some chaps consider me too honourable to dance in drinking establishments. Who knows, one such chap might dash to my place and advise Mama Watoto to come and drag me home because I have gone mad—mzee amekuwa wazimu!
In the course of the karaoke show and drinking, this young lady appears out of a crowd and rushes to me. “Oh, my husband; I am happy to see you again after such a long time!” she says, jumping to my lap. It is Lucy, you realise after a few seconds of confusion.
Lucy is an accomplished mhudumu known for her charm and notoriety. She had worked at a certain bar where we got close because I was intrigued by her peculiar health condition. I would offer her a drink, tell her to have lunch on my bill, things like that. I soon learnt she was expectant, something that triggered her peculiarity.
I politely remove her from my lap, then she says we should dance. I tell her I am too tired to dance. “But, I will buy you a beer,” I tell her.
