Why Pamamonya Ipapo is already the ‘Song’ Prophet Walter Magaya prays for Soul Jah Love
Prophet Walter Magaya prays for Soul Jah Love

Prophet Walter Magaya prays for Soul Jah Love

Bruce Ndlovu                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              IT was an image that would have brought a tear to even the hardest of Zimdancehall’s most hardcore followers.
In the image, taken sometime in December last year, the dreadlocked, carefree high priest of ZimDancehall, Soul Jah Love, has a slender arm extended somewhat uncertainly.

On the other end of his outstretched arm stands Prophet Walter Magaya, the most prominent of Zimbabwe’s growing legion of prospering prophets, who has his eyes fixed on the chanter’s left foot.

It is this foot, which after an accident earlier last year had begun to make public its mutiny against the rest of Soul Jah Love’s body, that has brought, palm to palm, the man who made his name from teaching the ways of the good book and the chanter whose sermons get their instruction from the infectious tap-tap of the dancehall riddim.

Whether the prophet’s prayers bore fruit on that fateful night in the capital is known only to him and his maker. What is clear however, is that few expected Soul Jah Love to bounce back from what looked like a monumental setback. But bounce back he did.

Five months later he has arguably the biggest song in the country whose web of influence has spun from the rust and dust of Mbare to the tiled terraces and manicured front yards of some of the country’s most affluent.

On social media, Pamamonya Ipapo is a meme, a tool for the country’s youths to twist for a quick laugh, like or retweet. In church, the song’s chorus has been stripped of its dancehall growl and menace by choirmasters and instantly dipped and baptised in the voices of some of church’s most gifted vocalists.

How did Jah Love make the swing from a man that seemed down for the count to his current heavyweight status? It is simple: Jah Love has been fighting all his life.

The incident with Magaya was just one episode in the life of a man whose stay on earth has at times seemed like a scene cut from a sad movie to which a director forgot to yell cut.

In what would be the first act of this Shakespearean tragedy, the audience would see Soul Jah Love’s mother pass away only a year after he is born in 1989.

His mother, the now famous Stembeni, left a son who would be diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 7.

The responsibility of raising Jah Love fell to his grandmother who would also pass on while Jah Love was in Grade 5. Later in his adult years, Jah Love would become a roving destitute, a rolling stone surviving on scraps salvaged from the unmerciful streets of Harare.

Last year, while on the road, Jah Love was involved in a car accident, and from the twisted metal of that wreckage, he emerged with not only his life, but a serious foot injury. That injury, due to his diabetes, was soon to become a foot ulcer which seemingly defied science, thereby necessitating the divine healing touch of one Prophet Magaya.

Going through the few details of his life, it is clear that Jah Love is a boxer that has lived his life on the ropes. He was destined to swing back at some point and Pamamonya Ipapo is a compelling right hook aimed at the sometimes cruel face of life itself.

The song, without Jah Love’s sad back story, is outstanding.

Over the dancehall riddim, Jah Love sounds like many unruly, but melodious chanters crowded into one recording booth, each of them itching to have their say. At one moment he is chanting in a low, calm and conversatory tone, before he slurs his words like he is high from the codeine that he proclaims he prefers over champagne.

Although the instrumental is infectious, Soul Jah Love’s voice is the star. His voice is chameleonic here, growling or deepening at one moment before breaking into melody as he launches into that trademark chorus: “Ndovadyira bhonzo nekuwonda kudai,

Ndinongomira pamamonya ipapo. Chidya mafuta zviya zvisingakore, Ndakangomira pamamonya ipapo. Mahorse zvimaboss. . .”

After his fourth and final verse it is clear: We are witnessing one of Zimbabwe’s premier griot in full flight.

What makes Pamamonya Ipapo such an important song however, is not how catchy it is or Jah Love’s vocal and lyrical excellence. Jah Love is not the only Zimbabwean that has or is going through strife and hardship.

In a space of two years, Zimbabweans have been to hell and back, as a drought that left some of them high and dry was followed by an unprecedented deluge that swept away almost everything but the skin on their starved bodies.

The country is battling through a cash crunch and many are struggling to make ends meet as the realities of another economic recession hit home. Jah Love’s song is a hit and the tap-tap of the beat will have many heads nodding to its addictive rhythm. For the down and out however, like Jah Love has been countless times in his life, the song serves a greater purpose. It signifies the triumph over outstanding odds and that is what makes it important.

Now more than ever, Zimbabwe needs its poets, like Jah Love, to sing.

 

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