Zimbabwe: Musarurwa - Composer of 1951 Mega-Hit Song Skokiaan

 

Zimbabwe: Musarurwa - Composer of 1951 Mega-Hit Song Skokiaan

The Herald (Harare)

December 6, 2006
Posted to the web December 6, 2006

Harare

IN the 1940s very little was expected from the black man in Africa and blacks were pushed into areas considered of little importance.

When a 22-year-old man from Zvimba joined the police force -- the British South Africa Police -- as a district interpreter, he had no problem in transferring to the newly-formed police band.

Although August Musarurwa, who had just left his job as a clerk with a tobacco company, chose to play the saxophone, he had no previous knowledge of the instrument after growing up in a reserve and attending Marshall Hartley School before trekking to the then Salisbury for employment.

But he proved to be a master at the instrument and a promising career that saw him eventually leaving the police band later was born.

He then joined the Bulawayo Cold Storage Commission and moved into the company's compound.

At the time, Bulawayo -- like most black South African townships -- was steaming with township jazz and at every tea party, either the pennywhistle or the saxophone dominated.

Besides Musarurwa's Bulawayo Sweet Rhythm Band at the time, there was the Cool 4 and the Golden Rhythm Crooners.

Influenced by marabi and kwela, Musarurwa composed songs that would easily be mistaken as South African despite having grown up in Mashonaland.

When he unleashed his 1951 mega-hit song, Skokiaan, it was conveniently labelled a South African song composed by a Rhodesian.

But it turned out that Skokiaan was not only unique to be referred to as a South African song but that it took on an international flavour that saw artistes -- great and small, known and unknown -- falling over each other to become the first to do a rendition of the song.

The original instrumental version of the song was released in 1954 and a United States version recorded by London Records that reached number 17 on the Billboard magazine chart issued later the same year.

Ralph Marterie, who was recorded by Mercury Records, did a rendition that peaked at number three on the charts while the only vocal version of the song that was done by The Four Lads and was recorded at Columbia Records went up to number seven.

Ray Anthony; Perez Prado; Louis Armstrong and Bill Haley and the Comets did other American renditions between 1954 and 1959 while in the United Kingdom Eve Boswell and Alma Cogan joined the stampede.

In 1978 Herb Alpert and Hugh Masekela revived the song on a brass duet before Paul Lunga and another South African jazz pioneer Ntemi Piliso did their own versions in the 1990s.

The last known rendition of the song was issued on the Kermit Ruffins album titled Big Easy in 2002.

This was how big and good the song composed by a Zimbabwean man became such that Louis Armstrong had to come down to Africa and seek out the composer who happened to be a very simple black man toiling for a living just like millions of his compatriots in colonial Rhodesia.

When the two men met at the airport, Armstrong gave Musarurwa a jacket and invited him to visit the US but shortly before the visit in 1962, his wife Tandiwe died.

So devastating was the death that Musarurwa himself also died in 1968 leaving a legacy that is likely to outlive even his children.