| There
is no future of music in Tanzania
Winner of the best male vocalist 2004 in Tanzania, son of a renowned
musician and a musician himself, Banana Zoro is not just a singer but an ace
dancer and a guitarist as well. Groomed in a music environment, he had been
seeing his father perform in live bands and became a way of life for young
Banana. He started singing in 1999, since then he has recorded several
songs, one of which he sang for his mother, titled “Mama”.
The Express: Why do they call you
Banana?
Banana: That is my name given to me by my late grandfather, I used
to hate it as a kid, when I was in class six they used to call me Banana
Ndizi. But when I started singing, I thought my name sounds very musical so
I started to like my name.
The Express: When did you actually start singing?
Banana: I used to do live performances with In Africa Band then I
began recording albums.
The Express: Is there a big difference between performing live and recording
tracks?
Banana: With performing live you have to face the audience all the
time and your expressions have to demonstrate what you are singing, so it’s
a challenge that way, otherwise its just the same.
The Express: Have you had any professional training?
Banana: Not at all, and this is not just my problem, it’s the same
with other artistes. The biggest problem is, we don’t have music schools in
Tanzania, we have talent but it cannot be developed professionally in
Tanzania. Going abroad is very expensive for a local musician.
The Express: How do you see the future of music in Tanzania?
Banana: There is no future for music in Tanzania, unlike other
countries where the government takes initiative to support their music, but
in Tanzania you don’t see that. And that is why we don’t perform well
internationally. Again we don’t even have distributors in other countries.
In South Africa, you have Sony, but here we still have local distributors
and the distribution is very slow.
The Express: Is our style of music a problem?
Banana: What style are we talking about? Bongo flavour or Hip Hop?
Because American Hip Hop is always preferred internationally, so that is
out. We just have the bongo flavour but we need to develop that further.
The Express: What do the Tanzanian musicians lack compared to international
artistes?
Banana: Creativity. Often you will see local artistes trying to copy
western singers, this won’t work because West is West, they have their style
which is natural to them if you try copying then you end up messing it up.
The Express: Did your dad influence you to come into music?
Banana: He inspired me. I used to live with my dad, I grew up seeing
him writing music and playing guitar at home all the time. I started
believing that all dads must be playing guitar, it is a quality that fathers
naturally possess. I found it strange when my friends at school told me
their dads did not play guitar. But again I never knew I will be a singer
because as a child I had very coarse voice, I had to practice a lot.
The Express: Why then didn’t you sing for your dad instead of the “Mama”song
?
Banana: When I was a kid my parents had separated and I did not have
a chance to see my mum a lot, so I was never able to tell her what she meant
to me or how much I loved her. So I decided to do that through my song.
The Express: I see you are dressed like
Michael, is he your icon?
Banana: Of course, number one. Since I saw the Thriller song I am
crazy for Jackson, I even tried dancing like him when I was a kid.
The Express: Dance is not given so much importance in most of our songs,
what is your opinion?
Banana: Its true, you just have people acting and moving around on
the set but not a real dance. You see, dance is an art by itself. One needs
to learn dancing. Just because you like dancing and you have an appealing
body you don’t become a dancer.
The Express: Which local musician(s) can you refer to as a real dancer?
Banana: Unique sisters for group dance and T.I.D for solo.
The Express: Is there a vision for Banana Zoro to turn into the next Michael
Jackson?
Banana: This is my dream. I want to break the world record in both
singing and dancing.
The Express: When do you practice?
Banana: For guitar, one hour before going to bed then every morning I
go to the beach for one hour of singing practice. I also have my dance
practice with my choreographer.
The Express: There has been some accusations against you that you stole Bob
Rudala’s song, what do you have to say to this?
Banana: There has been some serious misunderstanding about this
issue. Rudala, Bizman and myself we produced an album together, then I went
for the Pop Idol competition in South Africa. When I came back we split but
our songs continued to be played on the radio and people recognized the
songs as mine rather than our.
Interview by: Fatima
Grace Bapumia
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