Review of Mumaganiza bwanji

When everyone turns to music:
A look at ‘Mumaganiza Bwanji?’
Reviewed by Emmanuel Luciano

Every time a new artist is born, the artistic world rejoices because is also signifies the growth of the artistic realm in which the ‘fresh faces’ would be playing their trade. Of all the artistic fields one might catalogue, it is only the music field that is being flooded by the so-called ‘raw talent’.

Almost every Jim and Jack would want to become a musician because they saw their neighbour, friend, and brother, who had hitherto not played any instrument let alone have any background in music, making fortunes in music after cutting an album or two.

While it is for the good of the music industry that now and again there are new people who want to make it big joining the music industry, it becomes worrying to the same industry when it is always experimental artists--- who just want to make quick bucks----that are seen joining the industry other than people who have the passion for music.

The qualities of experimental artists are all there for everybody to see. They have nothing new to offer, they come up with a kind of music that you are likely to liken to some already established artist, thematically they have no substance and above all they do a substandard and hushed job just to get on to the market.

Lemuson Matemba’s debut 10-track album Mumaganiza Bwanji would help extrapolate the experimental-passionate artists’ dichotomy. Here is an artist who has released an album whose subject-matter is just too familiar. Basically the message in the album censures the society on infidelity, reminding it of the dangers of Aids. Kusasukwa kwa Mudzi with its beautiful instrumentation, is a song that paints a picture of the devastating nature of the disease: Matendawa a fika pa chimake/ ku school a phunzitsi kulibe.

The title-track Mumaganiza Bwanji is stylistically closer to Charles Nsaku while Tisakangane would be seen as another rendition of Chibade though with poor vocals. Zisinthe, a song whose title alone would raise the hopes of UDF supporters before disappointing them after listening to the entire song, has all the attributes of a well-rendered song with an empty message.

Done in local reggae, the album’s perceivable greatest weakness is its lack of cohesion. You have one song that is on high and all over sudden you encounter a song that is very much on low. The artist should have taken his time to polish his songs before rushing to the studio with them. He might not be an experimental artist but you get the impression that he belongs to that category if you follow his music. But good artists always prove critics wrong and this should spur the artist to improve both thematically and stylistically.

Realistically not all promising artists who delve into music come to realise their potential. Others, promising as they were, fade and stagnate with the passage of time while others go on to shake the world by making themselves real stars. Hopefully Matemba would one day become a big artist after all we are always learning daily.