The Sunday Mail
Prince Mushawevato
ANDY Muridzo’s latest offering “Tichambotenderera”, is an alluring effort.
However, I feel the music produced on “Tichambotenderera”, despite being of high sound quality, does not bring to the fore fresh listening and talking points.
Apart from being a Jah Prayzah wannabe, the musician further proceeds to exude his lack of creativity and laziness by unreservedly borrowing instrumentation and vocal flows from both local and foreign artistes.
This not-so-rousing occurrence is highly visible in tracks like “Kumabumbe”, “Dhibhi Remhuru” and “Jenny” in which the Uzumba-bred artiste “gets inspiration” from Progress Chipfumo, Tanzania’s Diamond Platnumz and Rockford “Roki” Josphats respectively.
It is the same case with a number of other tracks on the album in question but I will stop with these. Muridzo is disturbingly not bothered with his copycat tendencies.
Probably this is the reason why the artiste gleefully declared, “Yes, I’m a copycat of everything”, on national radio prior to his album launch. His fans appeared to have thus far been willing to overlook his copycat habit. Recent developments have nonetheless forced them to reconsider the position.
One thing, however, we cannot take away from the artiste despite his shenanigans is his smooth voice that even sounds electric when he croons his verses in the queen’s language.
Muridzo also has good composition skills with regards to lyrics.
His message is simple and easy to follow yet it still remains thought-provoking.
0The musician is so good with words such that even when he is singing gibberish, one is forced to try and decipher meaning from it.
This has been the case with his other two previous albums particularly on the tracks “Dherira” and “Chidhafu Dhunda”.
However, I feel he is going to remain a typical example of the adage “so near yet so far”, until he fully discovers himself and in the process becomes his own man. The foregone is proved in track five titled “Emma”, which features Jah Prayzah.
This is by far an above average collaboration that has potential to top music charts. The duet somewhat places Muridzo “in his rightful” position.
From the entry point up to the very last part of the song Jah Prayzah’s intonation is robust and filled with confidence that easily proves he is the master and Muridzo is a servant.
And when Jah Prayzah sings “…tovafambisa nzira dzemujecha” with Muridzo responding “takamirira kubuda kwezuva” on the song, one kind of gets answers to whatever questions they have in mind.
“Memo”, “Yahombarume”, the title track “Tichambotenderera”, “Chomudziva”, “Mai Maria”, “Merenziana”, “Chingoma Cherudo”, “Daira” and “Ndirangarire”, are the other songs that feature on the 13-track album.
But again, the aforesaid songs sound more like modified versions of music that has already been on the market hence it will be difficult for the crooner to be considered a serious artiste.
After all, Muridzo is stopping at nothing in idolising his role model Jah Prayzah, both in interviews and copying his style; why then would the public settle for a second best when they have access to the best?
The dreadlocked singer has spent the greater part of time ensuing the album launch, trying to convince his current and former fans that he did not slipup by joining the Military Touch Movement (MTM). But his shows have attracted measly crowds since the launch.
And as The Sunday Mail Leisure predicted in one of our articles prior to the launch, the album was not readily available on the day of the launch and the day after.
The album is still not readily available even at the musician’s gigs.
Muridzo’s manager, Gift Petro has resorted to personally move around with copies of the album in his car-boot and pockets for distribution.
Consequently, the album has been heavily pirated and is not officially selling as expected.
The bringing on board of Diamond Studios as a distribution and marketing partner has not helped much either.
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