The Making of a Unique Band
“By the rivers of Babylon I sat and wept,” thus sang the long- suffering Hebrews in their time of Babylonian captivity. They found themselves singing God’s song in a strange land. But though the song speaks of tears, it is actually a song of hope and redemption. The very act of singing it meant that the singers had in actual fact symbolically freed themselves. And, in these turbulent times we live in, we need songs and singers with enormous emotional power that can heal our grief, assuage our anxieties and allow us to hope for a better future. Hope Masike neKakuwe have it in them to do just this and more.
Hope, second from left, and members of Kakuwe
The dream and vision to form Kakuwe was born long before Hope decided to enrol at the Zimbabwe College of Music. Born with music in her blood, an independent feisty spirit, Hope was always someone who marched to a different drum, and so it was not surprising that when she decided to take her music seriously, she wanted to form a unique band with a different sound.
“I have always wanted a different band and sound,” she says. “In life, you meet many different characters and together you learn how to build something out of nothing. This was the case with me, but I just wasn’t getting my sound.”
Then she admits, with a hint of sad disappointment in her voice, “It’s not easy to get students to do your sound, especially when they are fellow students of music, because, then they also want to do their own.”
This, as history, has amply recorded is the path of pioneers: you are either way ahead of your time and there is no one to leap with you from mountain peak to mountain peak, as everyone prefers to go around mountains through the valley… or there is simply no one who digs what you are trying to achieve.
But life has a funny way of working itself out. As a Fine Art student, Hope’s Fashion Design prowess also came into its own, resulting in her own label which she aptly named after something close to her heart, “Idi” (Truth). It was during that time she met a couple of students who also had music coursing through their veins, and were also hungry for a unique sound and fresh way of interpreting the world around them.
Hope recalls, “Fine Art taught us to think outside the box, that the mind can go anywhere. We learnt to cross boundaries and discover creatively a whole range of possibilities- that has formed the basic structure of our music. We were- and still are- looking for something different.”
During the “Head to Foot” fashion show a few years ago, it was Hope’s unique sound, her transcendal music that formed the backdrop to the showcase for emerging Fashion Designers. Once the seed was sown, no force on earth could keep it from sprouting. Although the like- minded people with whom she had created the sound she was yearning for did not stay together, things would begin to fall into place during her tenure at the Zimbabwe College of Music.
Hope recalls how it all began to come together: “I met a guy who was a very good bass guitar player (Elisha Herema), and there was Theresa (Muteta) who saw what I was trying to do and played the recorder. We came together and later on found others.”
Kakuwe had become more definitive. Named after the bird that alerts other animals of impending danger in the forest, the “Go Away Bird”, the band Kakuwe was later to incorporate Blessed Rukweza, who plays the djembe (west African) drum and dances like one possessed, Owen Phiri (western drums) and one of the teachers at the College. Then the marimba wizard came along, Songwe Limbikani (another teacher at the college). Songwe’s playing is simply out of this world, inspired and there are times he, too, seems to have left this world, becoming one with his music and the Soul of the World.
Even though Kakuwe has a steady and even regular flow of gigs coming their way, including the regular Tuesday night slot at the Book Café (if you haven’t been to one yet, you don’t know what you are missing) Hope is convinced that they are not yet there. Ever the perfectionist, like all truly inspired original and innovative artists, Hope is always looking for a way to improve the sound and the band.
“We are still in the process making it grow and more solid,” she says and the intensity that fires her passion is unmistakeable in her voice.
This is not surprising when one considers that, as she herself puts it,: “I have always known that my destiny is to be an artist.”
As artists who believe that the human heart, mind and soul should not be limited the members of Kakuwe find and accord one another space to play what they are feeling within the rhythmic structure of each set piece. But there is no doubt that the force that brings it all together, the bedrock of the vision underlying it all, is Hope Masike.
Hope sees herself as a social commentator and strongly believes that the message within her music should help people become better.
“You see,” she says, “if we can help make people become better people, more responsible, morally grounded, then at least we can leave peacefully.”
In “Dziva reRudo”- one of the favourites of the Book Café regulars- a woman laments how she used to love her husband but now “nzira dzedu dzatungana” (the relationship has come to a crossroads and we are at loggerheads- the thrill is gone). The husband has developed a weakness for younger women, girls literally. The song speaks out against infidelity and the “small house” phenomenon, which Hope see as a form of “disrespect (for women) and has nothing to do with culture.”
The blame, Hope feels, is not only on the men who stray from home, but the women who accept to be the “small house.” In “Dziva reRudo” the woman has sacrificed everything for her husband but is betrayed by both her husband and his consorts.
“Vamwe Vanhu” hits out at selfish and self- aggrandizing individuals who take pleasure from the suffering of others (Vamwe vanhu vanofara/ kana vamwe vachishaya/Vachiguta vamwe vachishaya). But it is Hope’s own stand viz- a- viv such a mindset and way of life that is telling: “Ini handidi kuve mumwe wavo/ Ko iwe?” (I don’t one want to be one of them/ How about you?).
Through such songs Hope is asking people to make a stand in relation to the evil in our midst, hopefully on the side of good, so that we all do the right thing and “at least we live peacefully”.
The first song that Kakuwe ever did together was actually in Bemba, Mulinite Mwa (Lord I love you: Lord I love you/ All my life, everything I do/ I give unto you). Kakuwe almost invariably always open their shows with this song so that it becomes a veritable opening prayer, giving thanks and praises to the Almighty-also a request for blessings for the show and everyone present.
Bemba? Being the free spirited person with a penchant for questing that she is, Hope believes the best way to understand other people and culture is through their language. She is learning Ndebele, and apart from Bemba, she knows a bit of Shangani, too. Add her Mother tongue, Shona, and that other language with pretensions to being our mother tongue, English, and you have an idea of how gifted she is. No matter, though, what language she is singing in, there is no doubting the passion in Hope’s sultry vocals, and the range through which she can bring out layers of meaning and feeling from the lyrics.
Through the polyrhyhms of Kakukwe, this versatile young artist is on a mission and if you listen carefully to her songs, you will hear her poignant cathartic messages of hope that might just redeem you and the rest of world- and we might all just get along after all and “at least live peacefully”).