Figure 1.14. Omary's zebra bajaji. According to Omy, it is the only bajaji in Dar painted like this.
Figure 2.47. Innos'B feat Diamond Platinumz: "Yope Remix". This was biggest hit in Dar at the time. It was played everywhere and I heard it approximately 10 times a day, but I still didn't get tired of it.
Figure 2.46. Yölintu: "Jätkän humppa". An example of Finnish humppa with one-fifth progression on the bass.
ARRANGEMENT & RECORDING
Especially when jamming the song with my Stratocaster with a bit of distortion in the sound, I started to hear a possibility to infuse some rock elements in the song. Not because I wanted to force any influence like this, it just felt natural. The song had a foundation in reggae, but the beat was some kind of mid-tempo funk. With fuzzy guitar solos and some power chords over it, it sounds a bit like Prince with a touch of herb. Still, after all it has a strong afro sound to it, thanks to Ally Chudo’s percussion tracks and drum solo. The style is really not something heard often in Tanzania, but it still has some familiar elements. For a good song, you need the same things as is said to be needed for a good wedding: something new, something old, something borrowed and something blue(s).
In the studio we recorded the basic tracking the usual way presented before, this time without Shabo. Shabo couldn’t make it the day we recorded guitars and I ended up playing more than enough six-string tracks myself. The power chords that come in in the chorus got enforced and 80‘s-likened with chorus-effected synth tracks played by Muu, with whom we spent a considerable amount of time finding the right kind of sounds from the keyboard at use. Lennick sang the backing vocals, which was a very easy process because of her professionalism in the art. I had imagined the backing vocals for this song to be a little bit rougher and male, maybe because of the audio memory of the original rasta jam, but Kifimbo was determined the backing vocals should be sung by Lennick. I’m glad he was, because Lenick’s backing vocals sound beautiful and lush, and they give the otherwise rough song the bit of beautifulness and creaminess it needs.
"Nipe Tano" seems to be the biggest hit from the record at moment of writing this. With the urban video we made for it, it has been playing on several Dar es Salaam radio and music video TV channels, along with the other single "Nataka Kucheza". "Nipe Tano" means ”give me five” in Swahili and is usually actualized with bumping of fists, a very usual way of greeting in Tanzania especially among young people and rastas.
JAMMING BY THE BEACH FIRE
The first spark for the song was a late-night jam at Bagamoyo beach. We had attended the Bagamoyo festival at TaSUBa where we had had an unfortunate gig, that had been delayed until small hours the previous night. Late Sunday night we took our exit from the festival area at the college full of noise and people and went to enjoy a beach fire at a small rasta camp on the beach. We were jamming on some zilipendwa tunes, reggae classics, and Kifimbo’s songs. At one point when Kifimbo had the guitar he started playing Am - F - G chord progression and picked up the line Nipe tano from a conversation of a rasta teaching one Norwegian girl how to say give me five in Swahili nearby. I joined the newborn song with some others who were there. An older gentleman who was already quite tipsy came up with the catchy answer phrase ”Kwa mfano!” that translates as ”For example!”. Kifimbo gave the guitar to me and we continued jamming the song as we both sensed there is a lot of potential with this one. Already in this first jam I got some ideas for the general groove and production with some brakes and basslines. The reggae rhythm of the song combined with the minor key started to approach a bit of the feeling of Finnish ”humppa” at the very moment I straightened to the bass line on my lower strings for one-fifth progression on quarter notes. Later I found out that this jam at the beach was built upon older beach fire melody Kifimbo had been singing before with different lyrics.
Before the actual studio work we needed to practice the song with the band. It took a few rounds of playing to present the idea of song structure which features a turnaround of dominant chords before the chorus, an idea of mine. I was happy to see that this kind of element, that wasn’t the most conventional solution in the style we were operating in, was quite warmly welcomed especially by the bass player Balam. In this song I proposed more of not-so-afro-fusion-like elements from my own toolbox than in most of the other songs, but I still kept in mind the general sound and esthetic. We wanted it to sound new, to sound like fusion, but not in an untasteful way. In practice this means that no idea was used or even presented for a need of fusion, but only because it felt and sounded right to all of our ears. Of course I cannot talk on behalf of all the musicians involved, them all having their individual esthetic tastes, but generally I felt strongly that everybody could underwrite what we were doing. The stiff beat from the drum machine got a bit more groovy with Kikombe taking over and Ally Chudo making the bell pattern he’s own. Kikombe filled the start-of-chorus brakes with powerful drum rolls. In this song the bassline is very important and Balam did a great job finding the right touch. I had a melodic idea for the bass to the bridge, which Balam happily accepted.
MUSIC VIDEO
Near to the end of my time in Tanzania, we made two music videos, one for "Nataka Kucheza" and one for "Nipe Tano". "Nipe Tano" was done after we had finished the other video, so we had one good experience already with the video crew we were using, M-Motion Visual. The collective had a handful of people working on the project: Erick Santro, Saidi Kyoba, Karim Rajab, and William Kipara. First, we had a meeting with the director Erick (Directo ES) and the producer Saidi where we discussed the visions for the video. It was nice to throw the ball to some external people from the nuclear team and give them the space for creativity. They had listened to our songs and thought about the vision for the video beforehand, and in the meeting, I and Kifimbo gave a few ideas of our own. It clearly was also important to decide who is going to be the music video queen, which seemed to be an essential part of any Tanzanian music video. The idea for the "Nipe Tano" music video was simple: cool music video vibe in a local Dar es Salaam setting with people meeting each other and fist-bumping. The video for "Nataka Kucheza" had been more story-driven, so this was a nice change.
Figure 2.45. The music video for Nipe Tano, the track 8 of Mwana Mkala. The video has been shown often in different Tanzanian TV channels, including the national broadcasting company TBC.
JAMMING AT THE GHETTO
When we were back at home in Kinondoni we started jamming the song with Kifimbo playing the djembe and me on the electric guitar. Later on I quickly programmed a slow funky reggaeish beat on a small drum machine I had with me, with a bell pattern that later came to be an important part of the finalized song. The cornerstones of the lyrics emerged through improvisation in a jam, also for my verse. Later on, when Kifimbo took the pen and finalized his verse and translated it, I was able to think my verse through and the message of the song started to come into sight. The song is basically about peace, love, and co-operation in the world where people are isolating themselves from each other in the urban environments, physically close to each other but distant in spirit.
From my crazy-ish, partly gibberish improvised verse we recorded in this stage of the songwriting, I got the idea I want to make my verse in several languages, English, Swahili, Finnish, and Gibberish, in a way that it would be approachable from people no matter what languages they knew. I had realized that in Tanzania it is more common to have many languages in a song because of the evident multilingualism of the region. Many of the present-day hit songs played all day everywhere featured other languages than Swahili, some of what can’t possibly be understood by everybody in Tanzania. The biggest hit at the time was "Yope Remix" by Congolese artist Innos’B with the feat from Tanzania’s very own superstar Diamond Platinumz in Lingala, Swahili, and English. The French DJ Snake’s "Taki Taki" was also huge at the time, sung in Spanish and English. You could hear a lot of French from the radio because of Congo’s power in the East African popular music, among with several tribal languages. Of course Finnish is still a lot more alien to the people, but I started to think that maybe if spiced up with catchy enough phrases and a little bit of English and Swahili, I might be able to write a verse that would resonate in the audience from different kinds of language backgrounds.
M-Motion team chose a suitable neighborhood in Mwanayamala, Dar Es Salaam and we shot the video in one day. In this video, the crew wanted ”live” footage of the band playing instruments so we put up our setup on a street. Unfortunately only the bass player Balam was able to make it to the music video shoot from the real band along with me and Kifimbo. I gave a crash course on playing the drums to Omary, our friend and almost daily bajaji driver to play the drums for the video, the keyboard was taken over by a gentleman I do not to this day have any idea who he was (neither does Kifimbo) and background vocals were sung in the video by the music video queen Farida. Other parts of the video presented Kifimbo, myself, neighborhood children and some of our friends meeting each other, nipe tanoing one another, among some regular shots of Kifimbo and me singing our verses and dancing. The only idea that I insisted to have in the video myself, was riding Omary’s bajaji painted with zebra stripes, which to my pleasure made it to the final cut.
The most challenging moment in the video shooting for me was when we took the first shots of me and Kifimbo meeting people and doing nipe tano. After the first take, the producer came to me and criticized my manner of greeting the people. He said it is too lame and lacks the feeling, that I needed to do it more Bongo (Dar es Salaam) style. I started to become quite aware of myself in a bad way which is not the easiest state of mind to go fist-bumping and hugging people in front of the camera. Still, I tried my best and got some better feedback from the producer after the second shot, which eased my pain even though I cannot know if it was because of my increased level in the art of acting or a realization that this guy is not able to look less like a mzungu in the shot. In the end, the video turned out really nice, and I look natural enough in it, especially when I’m safe with my guitar. In the scenes of greeting people, you probably can see a hint of northern stiffness in the second protagonist but it’s probably just a part of the video’s approachable weirdness.
TRANSLATION
Give me five, give me five, five me five, oo oo oo, for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, woo woo woo woo, for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, oo oo oo, for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, woo woo woo woo, for example
Nothing new under the sun
Don't be fake when I greet you
The love in the heart has vanished
Walls isolate me from the neighbors
Light or dark, I don't see, I don't see
The sound of the getto, you hear, you hear
My children in Bagamoyo, give me five
My children in Kinondoni, give me five
Getto youth, see the morning light, give me five
My children from Mbagala, give me five
My children from Arusha, give me five
Neighbors, see the morning light, give me five
Give me five, give me five woo woo, for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, oo oo oo, for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, woo woo woo woo, for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, oo oo oo, for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, woo woo woo woo, for example
Rinki tinki tiki ting ting ting
Sometimes I say it in another way
Rinki tinki tiki ting ting ting
That’s the last thing I’m going to say
Getto youth, the bearded ones
Bear and the lion gonna give to you
I love you, I love you
Yeah, I love you but I’ll say it later
What is reason we fight every season
What is the season we fight for reason
Why is it my friend, we can’t live in peace
If you’re with me give five or so to say hey
Nipe tano
Give me five, give me five, five me five, oo oo oo, for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, woo woo woo woo, for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, oo oo oo, for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, woo woo woo woo, for example
And Kenya see the morning light, give me five
Uganda see the morning light, give me five
And Bongo (Dar Es Salaam) see the morning light, give me five, give me five, woo, for example
Zanzibar see the morning light, give me five
Helsinki see the morning light, give me five
My children, see the morning light, give me five, give me woo woo for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, oo oo oo, for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, woo woo woo woo, for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, oo oo oo, for example
Give me five, give me five, five me five, woo woo woo woo, for example
Yeah hahaha
Blessayah
A lot for God, eggs for the chicken
A cataract for Mnyamwezi, For Mkwere the work of God
The king of the jungle
Blessayah
Collaboration
Man Jussi bear
A lot for God
Cool down daddy
Blessed
Getto youth vibe