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4. KAZI KAZI - THE PROCESS

MTUNGI STUDIO


We recorded the music at Mtungi Studio, which is a recording studio built inside a container at Nafasi Art Space in Dar es Salaam. Nafasi Art Space is an art center mainly focused on contemporary visual art and performance, but at their premises they have also the small Mtungi Studio for music recording. I did not know what to expect from music recording studios in Dar es Salam accessible for us. We visited a few before choosing Mtungi which gave some kind of an idea what are the studio standards around town. These days Dar es Salam holds many studios, but most of them are focusing on Bongo Flava or Hip Hop which means that they might not be properly equipped for full live band recording, the main problem being the drum kit.


Mtungi studio, even if small, had everything essential for us in the container. Nafasi Art Space has also a band rehearsal space next to the studio, which made it possible to borrow the drum kit and some other instruments there at the location. It also turned out to be a little problem. If there was a rehearsal going on in adjacent rehearsal space while we were recording, the noise would interfere with our sessions for the sound isolation wasn’t so strong in the container. In these situations we either needed to wait for silence or discuss with the rehearsing group about volume. The studio consisted of the control room, equipped with a big mixer and an iMac computer, and the recording room at the back, just big enough to hold a drum kit. iMac was running Logic Pro 9 as the recording software. Luckily enough, Logic is the recording software I have the most experience of.

RECORDING BASIC TRACKS


We started recording all the songs except "Tusikate Miti" with the basic tracks of the drum kit, bass, one guitar, and demo vocals. Recording basic tracks means the recording of the fundamental elements of the song (for example drums, bass, one chord instrument), which forms the basis on which other instruments/tracks are later overdubbed. The aim was to get a drum track and a bass track good enough for the final record when the guitar track and the vocals were for demo purposes, which means that they are there to help to record the basic tracks, but will be re-recorded properly later. In some songs, we used the first round ”demo” guitar tracks too if they were good enough. Depending on the song, the basic guitar track was played either by me or by Shabo.


Bass was connected straight to the recording interface without an amp, as was guitar but though a Boss multi-effect module. I was pondering hard if we should make the songs with a metronome or not, but in the end, Balthazar told me it was not possible to monitor the click from the Logic computer software to the players while recording this way. In the old days, it wasn't possible to record music to the steady click of the metronome and neither was it possible to overdub tracks at will so easily, and for this reason all the instruments where recorded at the same time. In that sense, the basic bricks of this album are quite old school which gives it a certain sound I personally like very much.


Basic track recording sessions were quite enjoyable (if we forget about the heat in the container when there are 6-7 people inside with AC only usable between takes because of the noise it made) because as we were playing the music, we also heard how it is going to sound on record, which is not the case if you are recording tracks one by one. Only the drummer Kikombe in the isolated recording room in the back was wearing headphones (only one ear working) and me (guitar) the rest of the guys, Balam (bass), Shabo (guitar) and Kifimbo (voice) were all in the control room jamming, the music coming out from the studio monitors. Together with the fast pace from song to song that seemed natural for the musicians, I felt positively old school making the basic tracking. It was almost like we were recording all tracks live, four songs a day, even though we actually didn’t. 

4 TO 8 SONGS


Our studio sessions ended up being divided into two 4-song sessions with mixing in between, because at first, we were planning to record only four songs. Before we started the studio work we could not know how well, fast, and in what kind of quality we could record with this group at Mtungi Studio. I was surprised how everything turned out. All the musicians seemed to be quite accustomed to working very fast in the studio. Studiotime is expensive, so probably it’s not common to be able to sit around the studio and fine-tune some details for days. 


The first recordings of the songs sounded amazing already. Maybe I had been afraid that the quality of the audio would not be so good, but the first, even unmixed, results already made me very happy. When I heard Kifimbo’s music first time properly recorded, the songs started to show their full potential to me: I realized that what we were doing was quite special and indeed not without hit potential. 


After recording the four songs the musicians, Kifimbo and even Balthazar were all very excited, and they suggested expanding to a full-length album. I, being the only source of money for the project, needed to think through how much money I’m able and willing to invest in the project which kind of expanded all the time as we were doing it. I realized that this is a sort of once or at least quite rarely in a lifetime situation and decided to go for 8 songs.


Even with the 8 song plan we needed to choose which songs would make it to the album. Kifimbo has a lot of unrecorded material from his songwriting career, and already in a short time, we had come up with a fair few new collaboration song ideas together. We decided that half of the songs (which ended up to be "Simba", "Nunu", "Mwanitegela Usinga" and "Money Money Pesa") would be his old songs and the other half ("Tusikate Miti", "Mwana Mkala", "Nipe Tano", "Nataka Kucheza") our new songs together written. We did a fair bit of thinking on which songs from Kifimbo’s older repertoire to record, because of the simple reason that he has so many good songs. The four include what seems to be his most widely known songs (which is an interesting thing to say about non-recorded music these days) and our personal favorites, his and mine. From the collaboration songs, "Nataka Kucheza" had already been written last time I was in Tanzania in 2016. "Nipe Tano" and "Mwana Mkala" we kind of just came up with (both started as an improvised jam on a night out) and "Tusikate Miti" came to be when I proposed to Kifimbo that I would like us to try a ballad and look for a global theme for the song, which ended up to be global warming and environmental problems. Later on we added one more track, "Sema Basi", a reggae song Kifimbo had recorded at Block 41 before I came to Tanzania.

4.2 MTUNGI STUDIO & RECORDING BASIC TRACKS

Figure 2.30. Omary, Kifimbo, and I summarizing the situation at Nafasi Art Space just before starting the first recording session in Mtungi Studio.

Figure 2.31. Recording basic tracks for "Nunu". From left: Ally, Kifimbo, Shabo, Balaam, Balthazar, and Kikombe in playing the drum kit in the isolated recording room in the back. Kifimbo is singing demo vocals, Ally is supporting and taking a video for social media, Shabo, Balaam and Kikombe are recording final tracks.

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