Gurumo the Great

A famously one-eyed vocalist is busy on stage at music hall, and similarly busy are scores of music enthusiasts on the dance floor. Then, wonder of wonders, the closed eye pops open for about half a minute and closes again.

That, though, isn’t a fact; it is fiction, courtesy of a mischievous manufacturer of jokes, in relation to Muhidin Mwalimu Gurumo (pictured), the veteran Tanzanian music giant who died in Dar es Salaam on Sunday and buried at Masaki Village, in Coast Region’s Kisarawe District, yesterday.

In the course of a chit-chat at a recreation centre in Dar es Salaam in the mid-80s, the “manufacturer” had told (nay, lied to) a group of friends that when a music show staged by Juwata Jazz Band was at a crescendo in a hall in Arusha once, Gurumo had become momentarily full-sighted after the closed eye opened up.

We burst into laughter, but soon realised we had committed the collective sin of poking fun at someone’s physical disability.

However, or so we convinced ourselves, our guilt was minimised by the “logic” that, the companion who had manufactured the joke had only intended to reinforce Gurumo’s musical greatness and near-mythical stature.

It is instructive, indeed, that, Gurumo himself took in his stride, ‘chongo’, the not-so-pleasant Kiswahili word for a one-eyed person; but I gathered that, he restricted its use to a small circle of very close friends and acquaintances.

I am reliably informed that, at a big function in Dar es Salaam at which Msondo Ngoma Music Band was contracted to perform, the MC, quite in keeping with the ‘Msema Chochote’ (loose talker) characterisation, referred to Gurumo as ‘chogo’.

The vocalist, a darling to music fans within and far beyond Tanzania, was very infuriated: he tongue-lashed the MC, almost charged at him, and it took considerable initiatives to cool his temper, one of the peace makers being the chief guest.

Short temper, a not-unsurprising human trait, is something I detected in Gurumo, at his several shows that I attended.

Applying his mandate as band leader, and specifically the ‘commander’ nick-name that his subordinates had pinned on him, he often stopped shows for a couple of minutes when rowdy, mostly drunk dancers disturbed the peace.

Embarrassing a debtor

In dance halls in the working class suburbs – Uswahilini – he took similar action when troublesome characters gained entry by jumping over the fence or used fake tickets. It is only with the resumption of order he would allow the show to resume.

I realised, too, that the musician, whose other nick-name was ‘Mjomba’ (Uncle), did not brook dishonesty, and sometimes used crude methods of driving the point home.

In the middle of a show once, he accosted a lady whose shoes he confiscated. It transpired that she was a mistress of a band member to whom he had lent some money and who was dilly-dallying in repaying the debt. Gosh! What a method of embarrassing a debtor !

While entering a bar

By self-confession, he was a rabid drunkard - a habit he quit in 1982, in response to criticism from friends, but mostly due to the threat by his mother, Mwazani Sultani, that she would curse him.

He dreaded that eventuality because she was the one who had raised him after the death of his father, Mwalimu Mohammed Gurumo who had died when he was just a little boy, in partnership with Uncle Seleman Sultani Wamikole, to whom he dedicated one of his best songs, Shukrani kwa Mjomba. The mother died in 1981.

Incidentally, his first composition was Wakati Nikiingia Baa (While Entering a Bar).

Gurumo matched his short temper with strictness that was manifested, for instance, by intolerance to band members who missed rehearsal sessions, or took alcohol shortly before, and discreetly in-between shows.

Minus strictness, the outfits Gurumo led – notably Nuta, Juwata, Sikinde, Ottu and Msondo Ngoma – would certainly not have earned top league status in the country’s dance music industry.

A daladala commuter

But Gurumo, whose musical career spanned a good five decades-plus, and who died at the age of 74, was simultaneously a good-natured, friendly person, on and off the stage.

Being a brand unto himself, he was easily spotted by hundreds of people who greeted him whenever they bumped into the guru. He wasn’t showy, as some young generation entertainers are. He warmly acknowledged greetings and chatted up whoever so wished.

My first face-to-face encounter with Gurumo was mid-2013, when he popped into the Mwananchi Communications Limited newsroom.

I strode over to, greeted him reverentially, and expressed my concern over the way poor health was consigning him to the sidelines. He reciprocated my salaams and smiled broadly, apparently wishing to reassure me that he wasn’t in as bad a state as he rightly suspected I thought.

Commuting in daladalas didn’t embarrass him, but, albeit sorrowfully, he accepted it as an irony of fate - that a leading composer, vocalist and band leader, should be poverty-stricken, with only two modest houses – at Dar es Salaam’s Mamibo-Makuburi and Masaki Village – and a farm, to show for hard work and creativity spanning half a century !

In interviews with the Mwananchi he bemoaned the misery in which he and many old generation musicians were wallowing in, leading hand-to-mouth lives, because dance music didn’t yield handsome returns, reducing them to virtually volunteer entertainers.

Bongo Flava music

Thanks to entertainment industry revolution, dance (mainly rhumba-oriented music) has been considerably overshadowed by Bongo Flava music, whose stars are also financially very solid. It’s remarkable, indeed, that, at the launch of the video of one of his latest songs in August last year, a famous young musician, Nasibu Abdul a.k.a. Diamond, donated a car to the veteran.

Besides salaries, for institutions-run bands, those run like co-operative entities get most of their income from entrance fees, which, after making deductions for meeting basic expenses, very little is left for sharing amongst the members.

The bands also bank on the sale of audio and video cassettes, but given rampant piracy, only negligible sums trickle into their kitties as royalties.

Gurumo’s fame lay mainly in infusing traditional beats like Ndekule (from his coastal Zaramo tribe) into his compositions, giving his songs a unique flavour. His compositions further thrilled fans with the mixed grill of up to four vocalists, each chipping in at some stage of a given song.

This factor was so sensitive that, panic set in whenever one or two members of the close-nit line-up defected to other bands, because filling the gap(s) with vocalists of similar voice quality wasn’t easy.

Examples: The Gurumo-Bichuka duo rhymed so well that, whenever the latter, Hassan Rehani Bichuka, currently with Mlimani Park Orchestra (Wana Sikinde), left, the void was unmistakeable.

Earlier, the line-up of Gurumo, Bitchuka and ‘TX’ Moshi William, suffered a big blow when the latter died in March 2006. And when, due to poor health compounded by advancing age, Gurumo went into semi-retirement, the vocals section of the Msondo outfit was partially orphaned. Gurumo didn’t play any instrument on the stage, but, like DR Congo’s Tabu Ley who died in November 2013, he knew the basic workings of all of them, which he used to share skills with, and even fine-tune the on-stage performers.

A story is told that one day, Gurumo asked the famed solo maestro Saidi Mabera to accompany him to the Shauri Moyo railway yard in Dar. He told him to listen keenly to the sound of a locomotive engine in motion, memorise it, and practise it on his guitar, as part of preparations to give some of the future compositions a different sensational touch. Gurumo tape-recorded the sounds for Mabera’s practice sessions.

Gurumo ‘tasted’ music in earnest after joining Kilimanjaro Chacha Band in 1959, as a dream come true, having toyed with the art in his primary school band as a drummer.

A lasting imprint

But serious entry into the field was in 1964, when he joined Nuta Jazz Band. He was greatly influenced by compatriot Salum Abdallah of Cuban Marimba and Congolese maestro Luambo Luanzo Makiadi.

Close to fifty years later, he had featured in DDC Mlimani Park Orchestra, Orchestra Safari Sound, and Msondo Ngoma Band, in all of which he served in leadership positions, into which he was elected by mates, on account of his frontline role in pressing for good salaries and aceptable working conditions.

Mariam, one of his four children, followed her father’s footsteps, as a vocalist in a Taarab group in Temeke District, Dar es Salaam Region. Gurumo’s tremendous imprint on the music industry will endure eternally.