FORTY YEARS AGO, TONY HUNTER INTRODUCED ZIM MUSIC DOWN UNDER IN HIS NATIVE AUSTRALIA

IN May 1984, an Australian community radio station, Triple RRR, pioneered a weekly two-hour “African Music Show.”

It was hosted by Tony Hunter, a newly-converted African music enthusiast who had just spent some years volunteering as a teacher in Zimbabwe.

It exposed, for the first time, Zimbabwean music to the Australians.

Tony spent two years in Zimbabwe and, in 1983, travelled overland to Congo Kinshasa with the main goal of seeing as many live music performances as possible, and to collect vinyl.

“When I got home to Australia my tea chest of records had arrived and I decided that the word needed to be spread,” he said.

“My exposure to African music began when I took up a teaching position in newly independent Zimbabwe in May 1981.

“Zimbabwe recruited teachers from the Commonwealth and there were a lot who came from Australia. My posting was to Seke No 1 High School in the dormitory town called Chitungwiza, 30 kms out of Harare.

“My first experience was hearing two huge post independence albums – Africa by Oliver Mtukudzi and Gwindingwe Rine Shumba by Thomas Mapfumo.”

Hunter added:

“That trademark cough of Tuku’s was fascinating but it was the fast staccato guitar of Jonah Sithole in Mapfumo’s band that grabbed me the most. It was only later that I found out that the guitar was mimicking the mbira.

“I think of Oliver and Thomas as like the Beatles and the Stones. I’ve always been a Stones man and so it followed that much as I like love Oliver, I have always seen Mapfumo’s music as the spiritual heart of contemporary Zimbabwean music.

“I first saw bands at the Hotel Elizabeth – the Pied Pipers from memory. Having whites in the audience and a band with whites and blacks was a big thing in the new Zimbabwe.

“My regular haunt was the beer garden at Queens Hotel. A wonderful place with flowering jacaranda trees overhead, cheap beer and a regular flow of great bands. Internationals too – I can vividly remember Hugh Masekela’s shiny trumpet pointed upward to the African sky…fantastic.

“Mushandira Pamwe out in Highfield was a big beer barn and I’d see Thomas out there a lot though they could be really late nights as Thomas would take breaks for hours at a time smoking mbanje.

“When he toured Australia I complained about that and he said you should have joined us – well a little late. The Four Brothers were often resident out at Mushandira Pamwe – they heavy on the guitars with a succession of short fast songs.”

In Kwekwe, after visiting a friend, Hunter was exposed to the sounds of Africa Melody, a band which was led by John Kazadi, who had come from Lumbumbashi.

“The few references to the band describe it as sungura music but to me it had less of rhumba feel and at times more of country rock sound with the guitars right upfront.

“Some months later I was in some bar in a township and this guy jumps up and exclaims ‘KweKwe.’ It was John Kazadi and we greeted each other like long lost brothers.

“A band I regret never seeing were the Devera Ngwena Jazz Band, who had hit after hit in the early eighties.

“I understand they were based at a bar in a mining area but as the bar owner owned they equipment they could never tour. This changed later but not while I was there.”

Tony was responsible for compiling the hugely popular “Harare Hit Parade” series of posts on Electric Jive. – www.electricjive.blogspot.com

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