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Rute Mbangwa

Viola Mzungwana
JAZZ sensation Rute Mbangwa gave Bulawayo revellers a feel of her musical exploits last Saturday when she performed at Cape to Cairo Pub.

To Mbangwa, the performance was special as it was her first time to perform for the Bulawayo public. Over the years, she only performed at exclusive corporate events in the city.

The much-travelled muso, who has toured Norway, Algeria and South Africa, performed tracks such as Pangu Pangu, Iwe and Ndoro much to the crowds’ delight. She also sampled tracks off her forthcoming third album.

Impressively, the energetic multi-lingual Mbangwa could fluently perform in Ndebele and Shona.

Besides her tracks, she performed renditions of Judith Sephuma and Jimmy Dludlu’s songs and took revellers down memory lane with a remix of Joe Thomas’s Good Girls which she gave a jazz touch.

But, it was Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry which wowed the crowd most as they kept pleading with her to repeat the song.

The former Chipawo student, who was discovered by Tanga Wekwa Sando, said performing in Bulawayo was a great experience.

“I was impressed by the crowd’s reaction to my performance as they showed they knew most of my songs through singing along. I really felt at home,” Mbangwa said.

“Mfudzi, one of my slow mellow tunes seems to have gone down well with the crowd as I was surprised by a couple that came close to the stage and danced to the song despite it being very new to their ears.”

Mbangwa, who is a music teacher at Prince Edward School, revealed plans to visit Bulawayo monthly for shows.

“I’m planning to come to Bulawayo frequently, hopefully monthly and get to collaborate with artistes here. One of the artistes I’d love to work with is Ramsey who I think is very talented.”

She said her forthcoming album would be released soon and will be a winter warmer.