The late prominent and first
black generation author of Zimbabwe, Solomon Mutswairo’s opus is punctuated
with some record making national and literary projects. There is Feso (1957)
the first novel in the Shona language and the lyrics to ‘Simudzai Mureza
weZimbabwe’, the anthem of the Republic of Zimbabwe, some novels and scholarly
works. However, there is almost always the unconscious and unfortunate sidelining,
of his ‘smallest’ book of 1982 called ‘Tagutapadare: Poems for children.’ Recently, I came across the green booklet in an old cupbpoard and returned to childhood.
The blurb to the 2000 Zimbabwe Publishing House
version of the book describes the contents as ‘gamesongs.’ You notice that the
African children’s song, if closely considered, is no little song. As the child
sings these songs and play the subsequent games at various points in its life,
it engages with its world in various fundamental ways. The child learns to recognize itself as a
stakeholder in the natural and social environment through naming and even
interrogating its world.
Although in Tagutapadare,
Mutswairo is largely a collector and recorder of Shona childhood song games, a
project similar to A.C. Hodza’s Mitambo Yavasikana navakomana Pasichigare
(1984), Mutswairo is solely responsible for the ways in which he has recalled and
arranged these pieces. Despite this form of mediation, the songs remain
identifiable with their origins.
Once in a while we all remember the little songs that
we sang as boys and girls in the village or the street where we grew but rarely
do we remember to connect these songs and games with what we are today –
worldviews, fortunes or otherwise. When you walk or work or take a morning
shower, the songs erupt from the subconscious.
Waiting for the bus or performing an odd chore you catch yourself sing:
‘Kaposi
Kapiri
Karidza Mtengeni
Seri kweGomo
Chakachaka Tenderedza
Mkakumi’
Solomon Mutswairo's English version that accompanies the
Shona, lacks the rhyme and rhythm of the original but it nevertheless captures
the raw concepts:
‘One
and Two
Mtengeni beats his drum
Behind the hill
Chucking
and
putting it all together
and
ten is up’
That poem is a story about Mtengeni, a local drum
player whose beats on the drum counts up to ten as he adjusts to the notes of a
more serious drumming before the singers join in.
With that song you learnt to count and identify
objects even well before you went to primary school. The rhythm and the
subsequent playful touch to the lyrics aided you on. You thought it was a game
and that is where the catch was. The vitality of oral art is with its
involvement with life that at some point, art is the vehicle towards life.
Counting is important and central to survival in all
human societies. And in learning to count, aided by that song, you wanted to
make sure, for instance, all the cattle were in the kraal before you retired
for the day. You wanted to identify the specific row in the fields in which
there was the one and only cucumber or water-melon plant. In oral society,
rhythm is in fact part of administration.
If it was not ‘Kaposi kapiri,’ then
it was ‘Motsiro Dendere’ which is even more musical and entertaining. One could sing it as a game-song or as a
working song:
‘Motsiro
Dendere
Magaya
Mashangwe
Pirimhishwa
Pamuromo
WeDyange
Dyangirana
Chindori
Gume
rawa’
Solomon Mutsvairo’s translation goes:
‘I whistle
In my nest
My maize stalk
Cross legged
With full throated ease
Like a bird’s
fledgeling
Closing the nest
And ten is up’
In that song the child empathises with the peace in
the dove’s heart as it sits in its nest up a secure tree, cooing in the noon day
sun, far away from harm. When you sing ‘Motsiro Dendere’, you become the
beloved bird up in the nest. This allows the child to let go beyond its physical
and emotional space and allowing release from the limitations of individuality.
Some gamesongs captured by Mutswairo demonstrate the
limitlessness of man’s quest to be more than just himself. For instance,
‘Kazuva wee duu’ (hey Mr. Sun) is sung to the sun by children as they bath or
swim in a river or pool, imploring it to come out of its cover so that they
could be warm. On a wintry day, the children’s chant will actually result in the
sun momentarily appearing from behind the woolly clouds, glowing and suddenly
warming up the environment.
But, of course the sun goes behind the clouds after a
while and it is a common feature of Zimbabwe’s winter afternoons. On a summer
day, the child sings ‘Mvura naya-naya tidye mupunga’ (Rain come so that we
could have grain to eat), imploring the Skies to give Earth some water. There
is a realisation by the children of the magical power of words, the will power that
is infinite in prompting a specific reality at a given time. This teaches
children that man and the elements are in harmony and that the world is as it
is today and every time, partly because of man’s volition.
And when the new moon appears up in the sky, a bright
little crescent, you and colleagues look up and greet it with song:
‘Mwedzi
wagara-Nhasi
Wagara kuna
dendere
Dendere anamavara
Mavara anenge edzetse…’
There is a new
moon today
New up in the
sky
Like a blotchy
nest
With colours of
a bull frog…’
Usually it is the children who see the new moon first
in the African set up because they tend to run around the compound,
bantering amongst themselves just before it becomes very dark.
When they sing greetings to the new moon, the
elders stop whatever they are doing and rush out of the house to gaze at the
new moon too.
This is because the moon is
central in telling the time and for tying people to specific moments of the
seasons.
As the children sing, the
elders take note of how close or further away the rains, the cold and the
harvests are. This mobilises the whole community and offers people opportunity
to reflect on their relations with the elements and other men.
Some people look up into the sky and honestly
tell the new moon their individual wishes or regrets:
‘ Handichazviita,
amai wee!
Zvokupisa mwana
norupiza
Ptu! Ptu Denda rako iro
Ptu! Ptu!’
Mutswairo's translation:
‘I won’t anymore, my mother
burn the child
with bean pudding
spit! Spit! There you are moon with your sickness.’
But if the moon is struggling behind the clouds and
therefore not brilliant, it is time to sing and play about dangers that always
lark in the world. You sing about beasts
out in the forests in ‘Chinjiri Chiri Mugomo’:
‘Mushauri:
Vana vangu vapera
Vamwe:
necho chiri mugomo
Etc:
Vana vangu vapera hecho, hecho chauya’
Solomon Mutswairo’s translation goes:
‘ My
children have all perished
Chorus: By the monster in the
hill
Etc:
My children have all perished by the monster in the will’
There is no time to think that life is a safe
venture.
You begin to realize from an
early age, through song and dance that there are monsters, hurdles and problems
in the real world.
You learn about the
fragility of the human body and begin to prepare for life’s periodic sorrow and
grief.
However, the liberation comes from the realization that
your community will always stand by you.
As you sing ‘Chinjiri Chiri Mugomo’, you hold on to one another in a
single file and the leader tries to shield and protect ‘the children’, especially
the last in line, from being caught by the child who represents the monster.
Then there are songs to register the excitement
of the sense of sight. There is no
celebration in silence. When crossing a
stream or fetching water from a river, if a girl gets to see her beautiful
face, she sings and dances:
‘Amai, ndakanaka, amai!
A! amai ndakanaka, amai!
Amai, ndakanaka
amai!?
(Oh dear mother, how
beautiful I look) This is my own recollection.’
Or, if it is August, and the wind is blowing, swaying
the trees, one could burst out:
‘Miti inotepuka
Tepuka, tepuka
Miti inotepuka mumhepo’
(The trees are gently swaying in the wind)
There is also time to move the arms, the knees and the
waist as you sing. Standing out in the
school grounds during break-time, girls stand in pairs and trios and celebrate
the music in their own bodies. They
raise that their hands and clap in unison with their neighbours and the leader
leads the way, naming the next activity:
‘Mushauri: Chipikiri
ngo!, ngo!
Vamwe: Ngongongo,-o-o
Mushauri: Tamba uchidai, uchidai
Vamwe: Uchidaidaidaidai-I!’
And as you watch from the classroom, (doing your
corrections), you can single out the stiff jointed girls from the rhythmic
ones. You can hear the clapping and see
the celebration of girlhood. You can see
a small community of budding women learning what friendship and camaraderie
mean.
And when you are home, carrying your mother’s crying
baby on your back, you sing it to sleep gradually, with a song about doves and
nestlings.
‘Yanga iri njiva
Guu!
Nekana munyasi
Guu!
Kanokanga zviyo
Gu-u!
Zviyo zvavatete
Gu-u
Tsanga yangu yawa
Gu-u
NaM’kuyadenhe
Gu-u
Wagoiisepi
Gu-u
Kurwizi rukuru
Gu-u!’
(the dove does everything; roasting millet, looking
after the young one and in my clumsiness, I dropped grain and got worried over
it).
As you sing the baby (your own sibling) to sleep, you
also sing to yourself. The emotion of
the song also silences the naughty child in you as well.
These songs teach the child, first, to move in tandem
with its community and its norms. The songs also go beyond the plight of the
individual child, sending one searching (unconsciously) for the centre that
holds together; people, animals, seasons, the elements and the universe.
Therefore the children’s story in our society is in song and not always
narrated in the many children’s stories. And the story of society is in
children’s songs. The child is not silent. And more important, the child
inherits this song from the previous generation and breathes in it a new
content and fresh perspectives.
Mutswairo’s
activity of remembering these songs in the written form is important because
this is one way of keeping alive the memory of society.
-By Memory Chirere
