Salum Abdallah Yazidu |
Without any doubt, the Tanzanian film
that is now popular on international platforms is a film called Vuta N'kuvute –Tug of war
This film is adapted from a story
written by Shafi Adam Shafi. A story on the love life between a Zanzibari boy
Denge, who was also an activist for wanting the colonialists to leave Zanzibar,
and an Indian girl Yasmin who had escaped from her old Indian husband. The
story is set in the 50s during the British colonial rule in Zanzibar.
In the film there was a part that had Salum
Abdallah and his band the Cuban Marimba from Morogoro, performed a show in
Zanzibar. The show was attended by Denge and his friends. I was lucky to be
picked to do a research on the type of music that was performed by Salum
Abdallah and his band in those years, and eventually I was given the chance to
play 'Salum Abdallah' in the film, which
I considered a great honor.
In the early 50s, Cuban Marimba Band
like most of the bands then did not have electric instruments. Like many other
bands then Cuban Marimba Band has acoustic guitars, banjos, traditional drums,
trumpets and saxophones. After doing some research, I was able to find three
very old Cuban Marimba Band songs. In collaboration with musicians from Zanzibar’s Dhow Countries Music Academy, we practiced and
recorded three songs, then used those songs in the film. The song called 'Mpenzi wangu
umebadili nia’ has become a favorite song every time this movie has been shown.
Today, November 19, we commemorate 57
years since Salum Abdallah was laid to rest.
On November 18, 1965 which was a Thursday, Morogoro town was expecting a visit from the
then president Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere and and the Vice President Rashid
Mfaume Kawawa. The two top leaders were to officiate the opening ceremony of a large and important
college for the development of agriculture in the country, the Morogoro College
of Agriculture, which is currently known as SUA (Sokoine University of Agriculture).
The MP for Morogoro Oscar Kambona was also expected to be in the city at that
time.
The two big bands from Morogoro town,
Cuban Marimba Band led by Salum Abdallah Yazidu, who liked to be known by the
abbreviation of his name ‘SAY’, and the Morogoro Jazz Band, were scheduled to
be visited by the country's leading leaders during their performances. It was
obviously a great honor for the musicians, and due to the great competition of
the bands, the musicians and the fans of the bands were in high spirits waiting
for the battle of that important night in the history of the city of Morogoro.
Salum Abdallah, in addition to being a musician,
was also in the business of trucks supplying building materials, and at that
time he had a contract to provide sand for stones for National Housing
Corporation to build houses in Morogoro.
At around six o'clock in the evening
after the day's hustle and bustle of receiving leaders ended, Ramadhan Mdidi
who was the assistant to one of Salum Abdallah's truck drivers, came to inform
Salum that one of his lorries was stuck in the sand in the riverbed where they
had been digging sand, so it was wise to remove the lorry immediately lest it
should rain. Salum Abdallah ordered the car to be towed.
Salum sent one of his musician Waziri Nyange to oversee sound checking
at the hall where they were supposed to perform that evening, and he went with
another truck to tow the lorry stuck in the sand.
On that day, the Cuban Marimba Band
were scheduled to play music in the Community Center hall, while their
colleagues, the Morogoro Jazz Band, were scheduled to play in another hall in
Kichangani.
About an hour later, a young man who
was in the truck that had left with
Salum Abdallah ran back to Salum Abdallah's house and informed them that there
had been an accident and Salum was injured. This accident was remarkable and
for many years afterwards it created an interesting topic among Cuban Marimba
Fans.
According to those who were present,
darkness had already set in and when the truck in which Salum Abdallah was in ,
and just as it was nearing Msamvu, the headlights suddenly went out and the car
swerved and hit a curb on the side of the road, but the lights came on again,
it was so quick that those on the back of the truck started laughing, but their
laughter stopped suddenly after realizing that the door on the side where Salum
was sitting was open and he had fallen off. They went back and found him lying
on the road moaning in pain. At the same time, a white man in a small car,
stopped by and picked two people from the scene, one went to Salum's house to
give information and the other went to take a taxi which came and took the injured to the hospital. When he
arrived at the hospital, the doctors asked Salim to stretch his arms and then
his legs when he could, they assumed that he had not broken any bones but he was
having were just superficial pain that would end, in fact they discharged hime
and told him to report the next morning. At that time X-Ray technology was
still rare. Salum ordered his band not to perform that day, his friends stayed
with him throughout the pain filled night.
The next day, early in the morning the
patient was taken to the hospital and underwent surgery and it was discovered
that he had broken his hip and a piece of bone ruptured his bladder, which due
to the delay in treatment things were now very bad. About one o'clock in the
afternoon, he was taken out of the operating room and his friends who were
waiting were told to go home and eat well so that they would come later to
donate blood for the patient. They went out happily knowing that things will be
okay. They headed to their club house and prepared food and ate happily. They
even started to be a joke, one of them saying, "If the Arab recovers, he
will come up with a very strong hit about this incident". Salum's father
was a real Arab, and so Salum's friends used to call him 'the Arab'.
Unfortunately, about four in the afternoon they received the sad news that
Salum had passed away. News spread and people began flocking to his house, they
found that the dead body had already been brought home and was placed in a room
that had Salum had prepared for starting a shop.
There is another version of the story that
tells that after Salum was known to have died, the Chief Regional Doctor drove
his car to Salum's house and parked his car outside the musicians house and
started crying, everybody around immediately understood that things had gone
wrong, so they were able to prepare the room for Salum's body, so his fans could see him for
the last time. It didn't take long for the news to spread in Morogoro and there
was so much commotion that police were needed due to the large number of people
who gathered at the house of their beloved Salum Abdallah.
The next day the situation became more
difficult when escorting the corpse to the cemetery, it was as if everyone
wanted to just even touch the coffin to
show love, it was again necessary for
the police to be called to bring harmony. Salum's coffin was a carried from his mother’s
house in Nunge to Msamvu where he was
buried, aline sstreched between these
two places, although the deceased had many trucks, no car was used to carry his
body, his fans lovingly did that.
Salum Abdallah's song EE Mola wangu (OH My Lord) that he composed
shortly before his death, brought many interpretations and especially due to
circumstances of his death. A few lines song said this;
O my Lord O my Lord,
Strip me of the world,
People of the world,
Are looking for ways to kill me ,
They want to oppress my soul,
From Love and happiness,
And I give my greetings,
To my brothers and relatives
Of love and happiness
To ease them the pain
When the accident gets me
While crying for me
I will tell God
How I was treated in the world
It was believed he knew someone wanted
him dead, that’s why he composed the song.
Iis now 57 years since the death of
Salum Abdallah Yazidu 'SAY', but Cuban Marimba Band songs such as, Wanawake wa
Tanzania, Shemeji Shemeji, Ngoma iko huku, can still be heard in the music
scene from time to time and even continue to be performed on stage with young musicians,
some of whom even their parents were not born the day Salum Abdallah died.
And the film Vuta N'kuvute has
reminded us again of the fame of the great Salum Abdallah.
MAY HE CONTINUE TO REST IN ETERNAL
PEACE
I love his songs.' shemeji shemeji Huku mumezina taa' and ' ngoma Iko hapa' Ndugu Kitime Andika kitabu please.
ReplyDeletethats my grandfather
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