The Bhundu Boys - Biography
By J Poet
The Bhundu Boys exploded out of Zimbabwe in the late 80s and people expected them to be the first African superstars. The twin guitar attack of Rise Kagona and Biggie Tembo owed as much to The Rolling Stones as it did to the music of Zimbabwe and the Congo, the bands other main influences, and the rhythm section of David Mankaba and Kenny Chitsvatsva was unstoppable. After capturing Zimbabwe with five straight singles, and two of the best Afropop albums ever made – Shabini (1986 Discafrique) and Tsvimbodzemoto (1987 Discafrique) - they decided to take a chance on Europe and came to Scotland in 1986. Within months they’d opened shows for Madonna playing to 250,000 people and signed to Island Records for international distribution. Then Tembo, who had become the focus of most of the press due to his larger than life personality, was kicked out of the band and shortly thereafter David Mankaba and Shakespeare Kangwena died of AIDS. The band carried on with other members and made a few more albums before calling it quits. Tembo was found hanging in a cell in an asylum in 1995 and Kagona is now living in poverty in the Scottish countryside.
The band got together in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, and played dive bars where sets lasted from 7 PM to 4 AM, and it was dangerous to take a break; drunken patrons pushed them back on stage of they tried to let up. Konga and Tembo had grown up listening to The Rolling Stones, Beatles and Hendrix on government radio when the country was ruled by Britain and called Rhodesia. They took their name, which translates as Bush Boys, the name given to the young men who smuggled food and ammunition to the freedom fighters that were waging guerilla war against the British colonial government. They’d grown up in rock cover bands, but when they started writing their own songs (Tembo wrote most of them), dressing in camouflage fatigues and singing in Shona, the national language of Zimbabwe, they were a sensation. Their first four singles for the small white owned Discafrique label – “Hatisitose”, which was #1 for three months, “Baba Munini Francis,” “Wenhamo Haaneti,” and “Ndimboze” – all topped the charts. By 1984 they were Zimbabwe’s most popular band.
They landed in Scotland in 1986, just before the release of Tsvimbodzemoto. Their manager promptly vanished will all their money. Owen Elias and Doug Veitch, the promoters that had licensed Shabini and Tsvimbodzemoto for their small Discafrique label, put them up in Hawick, Scotland, the only black men in the town. A friend of Veitch, Gordon Muir, became their manager and got them on the road. Within a year they were drawing big crowds all over the UK. They opened for Madonna at Wembley and got signed by Warner Brothers in the UK, Island in the US. With their advance they bought a house in North London and the band started to disintegrate.
Shabini and Tsvimbodzemoto had been made in Zimbabwe before the band came to the UK and combined Shona religious music, soukous, a punchy local dance style called jit and rock’n’roll into short, sharp poptunes that were both familiar and alien to British and American ears. The relentless rhythms, aggressive twin guitar attack and their beautiful harmony vocals blew people away. It was simple, driving, roots heavy afropop. Their first English album, True Jit (1988 Mango) was a bit slicker, but still packed a wallop. Pamberi (1989 Mango) was less produced, but neither sold as well as their original Zimbabwe albums. The label dropped them and Tembo, who was getting most of the press left or got kicked out, depending on who you ask.
The band went on, but the fire was gone. By 1993 David Mankaba, bass
Kenny Chitsvatsva, Shakie (Shakespeare) Kangwena, and Shepard Munyama had died of AIDS related illness, while 40% of the population of Zimbabwe was testing positive for HIV. Tembo was found hanging in a cell in an asylum in 1995 under suspicious circumstances. The band carried on for a while, Kagona and Chitsvatsva reduced to playing along to back up tapes with an ever shifting crowd of sidemen supporting them. They stopped playing in 2000. Today Kagona still lives in Scotland. He’s playing with his former record company head Doug Veitch in a band called Culture Clash. Chitsvatsva lives in London and plays in a band called Harare.
