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| Features |
| Book Review: Introducing Skeffa Chimoto |
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by
Kondwani Kamiyala, 10 April 2007
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09:37:05
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Artist: Skeffa Chimoto
Album: Nabola Moyo
Studio: Eclipse Studio
Reviewed: Kondwani Kamiyala
Debut albums, to say the least, are usually not taken seriously. Many unknown Malawian musicians find the going tough both on the airwaves and on the market with their first albums, except in really exceptional cases.
The major reason is that in this day and age, music has become the bread and butter for any eddieandbill who has failed to make it in other spheres of life. We take the ukayipa dziwa nyimbo adadge rather too literally.
Basically, first timers in the music industry face a major feat to make a break. We are more apt to relegate them to the trashcan even before we give them an ear, and even before they strike a cord.
Skeffa Chimoto is one new kid on the Malawi music block. And like all newbies in the field, Chimoto may end up somewhere in the wilderness. Yet, his music contains that coordination, arrangement and composure that even some experienced musicians lack.
From new age R&B; to radical reggae to ….. , beats that occupy places in his debut album Nabola Moyo, Chimoto proves you need fiery talent to get it right. That is if you lack the experience.
The album is also a mélange of traditional beats like chitelera, the dance that rocks the Nkhota Kota and Salima rural nights and mganda, which becomes a synonym for the Malawian wedding song.
But Chimoto’s greatest asset is not the beat. If he is to gain merit as a young musician going against all odds, he owes kudos to his voice, which rises and falls, and is stretched methodically and befittingly to the melody, tempo and rhythm of the songs. A rare, blazing talent indeed.
Chimoto is also endowed with the art of composition. His language, in its simplicity and terseness, attains so much power in richness. His allegory, figures and images add form and color to his poetic licence that goes well with the songs’ lyrical content.
He addresses themes that are to the conscious mind: religion, love (romantic, paternal, fraternal and maternal) and AIDS-related death.
The title track, Nabola Moyo is a song for parents. Given the life, he sings, he would live to give his father and mother all due respect. Check the figures when he says: Ndili ndi ludzu lokuchitirani zabwino.
And as he sings, you are touched by that respect for parents that must never fade, even where one rises to be a leader. Are we not taught that even the man of seventy remains to his mother a baby?
Chabodza is a melancholic tune of romance. Ay, romance always comes with a tinge of melancholy and melodrama. Chimoto cries against the false love a woman tries to expose to man she previously deserted because of poverty. As the man begins to prosper, she comes back to him flirting and coaxing.
His urge: Go away, deceitful woman and your cosmetic smiles.
Chimoto turns religious in Bwenzi Langa (Yesu). He praises the Lord, who clothes him, shelters him and feeds his soul with physical and spiritual nourishment, even though he is a sinner. He also reckons that praise is due to Jesus, and begs to live a life of piety, since like all lesser mortals, the musician faces that ultimate and necessary end: death.
Ulesi sings against laziness. The artist brings out the cause-effect dogma of laziness: languor and lethargy breeds gossip which in turn engenders jealousy and on its part gives birth to physical and mental violence.
Three songs Usamasowe, Chikondi and Tiye Darling are love songs, with the issue of AIDS, which has oftentimes gone hand-in-hand with romance, cropping up.
With the seven-track album, you would say Chimoto’s journey into the music jungle has begun on the right footing. What remains for him is not to let that success, or failure, of the record get to his head. Success—or failure, real or imagined, will be perceived by how much he will keep trodding and at what pace.
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