OPINION: THE UNTITLED

MY opinion has no title so I have dubbed it ‘The Untitled’.
When God leads nothing is impossible.
Zimbabwean journalist Chipo Sabeta was given a prestigious award at FIFA headquarters in Zurich Thursday and got honours from legendary Arsene Wenger.
What an achievement !
Her award prompted me to revisit one such story of Zimbabwean born music producer Brian Soko who carved history by becoming the first Zimbabwean to win a gong at the prestigious Grammy awards back in 2015.
Indeed a prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.
The Chiredzi born 30-year old won a Grammy for his production role on American diva Beyonce Knowles-Carter on her award winning album Drunk In Love.
Zimbabwe has produced so many big musicians like Thomas Mapfumo, the late national hero Oliver Mtukudzi,Lovemore Majaivhana and Stella Chiweshe among others, but Soko, like Sabeta proved against all odds that the sky is the limit -some have hopes and dreams , but the duo showed ways and means!

Although little is known about what Soko was up to during his stay in the country, impeccable sources revealed that he always had a passion for music.
He was born in Chiredzi where his father was a banker and he was embark on the great trek to South Africa where his parents sought greener pastures.
“They moved to South Africa where his parents and older brother Prince stayed briefly,” said a source who claimed to be privy to Soko’s history but decided to keep the information under the lid (at least for now!).
After a short stay in South Africa, Soko went under his brother Prince’s tutelage after the family’s relocation to the United States.

This is where he nurtured his art of hip hop.

I digress.

No doubt Zimbos listened to hip-hop ever since the days of Run DMC.(Easy E rest in peace!)

The genre was popularised by the late Chiwoniso Maraire who teamed up with Metaphysics (now based in Germany) and Tony Chihota nd formed an outfit called a Piece of Ebony.
Having had an opportunity to interact with all the three on a personal level ,I could feel that music and hip hop was in their DNA.
No doubt.

That was the first hip hop group in the country and since then hip hop has free in leaps and bounds.

Later on we have had the likes of Munya Maraire doing it big in the cut throat American hip hop industry.

And now back to Soko.

Fast forward two decades later after the ground had been set by a Piece of Ebony, Soko has proved that Zim music can penetrate the world.

After studying sound engineering at a college in Florida, Soko met up with some brothers who shared the same passion.

With their common denominator being purely the love for music, the four formed an outfit they coined ‘The Order’.

They were like soldiers in a war to conquer the world through music, forget about Russia and Ukraine.

‘The Order’ was made up of four brothers in the same struggle and the Grammy victory proved that they are conquerors.

Besides the Grammy award, Soko articulated on his Twitter that they have since produced music for Lil Wayne from Cash Money Records, Drake, Future and Rich Gang.

To date, Soko and his team have won three Billboard music awards – Most Performed Song 2014 R&B/Hip-Hop Award Song for Lil Wayne’s No Worries, Billboard No 1 Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Song for Beyoncé’s Drunk In Love and Billboard No 1 Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay for Beyoncé’s Drunk In Love.

Soko is also ploughing back the rich experience he has gotten in the United States back home where he has worked with Simba Tagz.

Soko is also the one who produced Nyovest’s hit song Phumakin.

The National Arts Council of Zimbabwe must recognise such great art exports and also invest more in the local arts sector.
There as so many Sokos in the high density areas of Mbare, Mufakose, Glen-Norah and so on but lack of government support stifle their growth.
That is the same challenge that took Urban Grooves into comatose but I believe that genre is like a dormant volcano ,waiting to erupt especially at a time when Zim Dancehall is slowly losing its mojo.
Infact I believe Zim Dancehall is a sub genre of Urban Grooves.
If one listens to the first Urban Grooves album The Future produced at Gilbert Muvararirwa’s Shamiso Studios by Delani Makhalima, you can confirm that they were dancehall artistes there only that the coin name Zim Dancehall had not existed before a United Kingdom dee-jay came up with the name.
Sniper is part of that ‘school’.
Infact , prior to that we had the likes of Mbare bred Yuppy Banton of the Memories fame, Major E , Booker T, Rassie I among others , they sang dancehall music.
On a song called Zindoga by the late Andy Brown, Potato even came in with a dancehall verse!
That was the era of Sound Systems where dancehall music was popular in the country with names easily coming to mind include Farai Shambare, Mr Muffin, Lecture Munya, Syd Fresh ,Madd Minnox , Jackie Bango, Smiley (the original Smiley, not the Smiley Lite from Legendary Sounds!) and to some extent award winning journo Hopewell Chin’ono whose presence was around the Star Time and Dandaro era.
As I alluded in my introduction, my opinion has no title and ‘direction’ so let me end it here dear reader.