Poem dedicated to Oliver Mtukudzi

September 16, 2008 by Emmanuel Sigauke ·
Filed under: Art life, Entertainment, Arts & Culture, Poetry

HURRY, TUKU IN CONCERT!

If you had been with me
You too would have seen Tuku at Yoshi’s.
Premier jazz stylist, giant of Southern Africa,
Tuku has a voice that rouses the dead,
a consciousness that slaps one from

the sleep of forgetfulness.
He lit sparks of memory;
then as we swayed to songs about aging
and not aging, about going away and coming back
(especially coming back),
about stunted love, betrayal, Limpopos of tears,
stories of learning to forget, about forgetting to learn,
we coalesced with the stone soul, the pride of our homeland.

This Zimbabwean musician,
years upon years of rearing the young and the old alike:
Tuku, the King of Shauro, unbruised by Time and Change,
able to keep a smile, when he mouths the legend Zimbabwe:
to some a torn, often deserted, unremembered
chamber of squalor, impossible efforts,
dead spirits of the oncecaring
dead;to others granite breasts
that feed hearts where they would wilt.

He started with, “We are from Zimbabwe!”
Following this with a rendition
an all-time national, now diasporic, favorite,
one about going away and coming back
(especially coming back);
an unflinching love for the soil
that heaved forth
the very meaning of the poetry of this poetry.
So then there was ululation and dancing,
(especially dancing)
by those who new and cared,
and those who did not know but learned to care
about an art from a familiar and increasingly unfamiliar
piece of earth, where the worst of the best
are now the best of the worst.

So then there was clapping and dancing
(especially dancing), driven to Chimanimani heights
by earth-possessed, space-dispossessed drums,
then the transfiguring voice of one
who has nursed hearts,
nurtured ambition,
oiled the desire for life
where heads and hearts quiver
when the luxury Life is mentioned.

So then there was crying and dancing
(especially the dancing),
ripples and waves of hearts now damp with hope
until we could not tell
if we had spent only two
or three hours at Yoshi’s,
or a non-stopping train of days,
only to be awakened by Parking Lot attendant’s Voice,

intoning “One-and-half hours is $4.00.”
But even as cars revved their farewell,
and as hearts pulsed to recovery,
we skipped and hopped in glee, celebrating
recovered memories for some,
the start of a new journey for others,
a combination of the two for me.

from Forever Let Me Go by Emmanuel Sigauke

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