The Sunday Mail
Tapiwanashe Dumba Harare Poly Student
For a musical band that is only a year old, this is undoubtedly a remarkable achievement.
To start with they won the 2015 Research and Intellectual Outputs, Science, Engineering and Technology (RIO-SET) Expo, then the best electric band award at the Tertiary Institutions Festival of Arts in Zimbabwe (TIFAZ) and now they are celebrating another victory.
This year the Harare Polytechnic outfit was crowned winners of this year’s RIO-SET Electric band competition out of 22 institutions who participated.
What a fine run?
The award comes after it won another trophy at the TIFAZ competition this year confirming the band’s growing influence and potential to be an unstoppable force in the years to come.
The competition ran under the theme: Promoting Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics through music”.
The poly band belted out a song in line with the theme of the competition.
The song encouraged students to embrace the STEM revolution.
It also highlighted some of the benefits that could accrue to the country if STEM is successfully implemented and implores Zimbabweans to participate in the country’s development process.
Led by Albert Tendai Nyabinde, son to one of Zimbabwe’s finest Jazz musicians Bob Nyabinde, the band has taken Zimbabwe’s tertiary education music circles by storm.
“It was a splendid performance,” said Albert Nyabinde. “Our instruments were coherent and dynamics were conformed to the genre, harmonies and instrumentation was on point.”
Nyabinde looks beyond the entertainment value in the music.
“Let’s build our future through educating our children and teaching them entrepreneurial skills taking advantage of STEM tool. The idea is not to preach the gospel of STEM but crafting words that can best preach the gospel even to a sceptical soul.”
At the age of 16, Tendai Nyabinde was initiated into the world of music by his father who taught him how to play the acoustic guitar. He later became a choreographer and received further guidance from music luminaries such as Oliver Mutukudzi and Steve Dyre who were friends of his father. Drawing from the experience, accumulated over the years, he has changed the face of entertainment at Harare Polytechnic.
“I was motivated to start the band by a group of students who would gather and play music for fun, “he says.
One of the most interesting features of the band is its cosmopolitan nature. The 24-member band is composed of Zimbabwean and Congolese students, whose different backgrounds enrich their enthralling music, adding rhythm to the level of artistry and ingenuity. The band has a vision to one day make a mark on Zimbabwe’s contemporary music scene and beyond.
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