Figure 2.43. Ally Chudo playing the djembe part for "Simba". First is the unison intro, then starts the pattern that stays for the whole song.
We recorded this song like most of the others, first basic tracking and then overdubbing guitars, keyboards, and percussion. Since the first jams on this song at the rehearsals, I had the idea of playing a melodic solo focusing on lower strings of the guitar with sharp sound with some spring reverb, a sound that is very characteristic to surf music and 60‘s Finnish instrumental rock, rautalanka (iron wire). I'm quite satisfied with how it turned out. The solo is wistful and it’s melancholy fits the song well even though it is aesthetically a surprising choice for this kind of afro reggae.
The song is about HIV, sang from a perspective of an adult teaching the children. The lyrics of the chorus are actually from a children’s game, which starts with a kind of nursery rhyme about the simba mkali, the dangerous lion, proceeded by a tag-kind of running game where the lion tries to catch the children. This game seems to be known all around Tanzania along with the poem. In Kifimbo’s song, it gets a new meaning.
Regardless of metaphoric lyrics, the song is quite straightforward and educational, but it’s also catchy, sad, beautiful, and somehow empowering. It is very easy for Tanzanians to tag along with this song and sing it even the first time they hear it because the lyric of the chorus is known to everybody. Besides the great lyrics, "Simba" is, in my opinion one of Kifimbo’s finest compositions in terms of melody. The minor key is not so common in Kifimbo’s repertoire. The question and answer melodies in the chorus underline the changes in the chords, which makes an impression of functional harmony. This probably is the theoretical explanation why many of Kifimbo’s melodies sound so exceptionally good, among many other reasons harder to address in terms of music theory.
"Simba" (the lion) is one of Kifimbo’s oldest songs and maybe the best known. It has been recorded before as an acoustic version for a compilation album Kibagamoyo Wabagamoyo (Kulttuuriosuuskunta Uulu, 2010), presenting singer-songwriters of Bagamoyo. In over ten years of existence, the song surely has had many kinds of arrangements, but the current one Kifimbo’s band was playing when I joined the group was particularly interesting. The intro features a rhythmic pattern composed by Kifimbo, followed by a fast unison passage of Kikombe’s imagination. After this what emerges is quite conventional mid-tempo reggae groove, but with an intense, fast djembe part over it played by percussionist Ally Chudo. I was confused about the djembe part at first, and I thought that sometimes it leads the band to play this quite tender and beautiful song too hard. In the end, I understood that the djembe part is the special groove characteristic for this song, and mixed to the right level it makes the rhythm section especially juicy, still leaving space to the song’s intimate tone.