148: Chibite, by Hukwe Zawose

Hukwe Zawose (Tanzania)
Chibite (1996)
10 tracks, 66 minutes
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Dr Hukwe Zawose was a master musician of the Wagogo people of central Tanzania. Chibite was recorded near the beginning of Hukwe’s short but bright international career. As well as an amazing and powerful cover (the art direction of Real World Records in those first decade-and-a-bit was absolutely stunning), the music is likewise, especially given that the performance is almost entirely solo and built up through overdubs.

On this record, he shows just how he attained that role of patriarch: he was a master of such a wide range of his people’s music. He is most well-known for his performances on the ilimba thumb-piano, but here he also shows his equal prowess on the filimbi flute and izeze fiddles. And then there’s his voice – or should that be voices? Depending on the setting, Hukwe’s voice takes on so many forms. It could be crystal clear and forthright; at other times it could be so high-pitched and loud that it was like a whistle; then again, he sounds harsh and growling, reminiscent of Sámi joik or Siberian throat-singers.

There is something really special about this music that I cannot quite describe. It sounds like…what? A deep, placid lake, perhaps, or the movements of the universe, or a gentle breeze. I’m not even sure what I mean, but I think there are three things that all work together to give the music that effect. Let’s see:

• A lot of it comes down to how the music is tuned – again, a difficult thing to describe with words, but the pentatonic scales that this music works within seem slightly further away from each other than the equal tempered music we are used to hearing in modern music. Each new note comes as a slight surprise to the unconscious area of the brain, which leads to a pleasant tingle in the back of the skull throughout.
• In a related note is the harmonies that are created by the different instruments playing together and when he sings together with his nephew Charles, the only other musician on the album. I think this is actually best heard on a track from Hukwe and Charles’ later album Mkuki Wa Rocho called ‘Mkatale Kulonga’ (you can hear a lengthy clip of the track on the BBC’s website). The harmonies are super open – all perfect fifths and fourths, and loads of directly parallel movement. As you can hear in that track, they are so exactly perfect in their movement across quite complicated speech-rhythms that it sounds uncanny, like one person singing with two voices.
• And then there’s the buzz. I’ve talked about buzz before, most recently regarding the gyil and it’s used in the same way here. Many of Hukwe’s ilimba are absolutely covered in rattles on both the instrument’s lamellas and the body itself, meaning that when they are played, the complicated, interlocking lines are underpinned with an almighty buzz which highlights every one of every note’s fundamental frequencies. It would be cacophonous if it weren’t for that special tuning mentioned above. Instead it becomes intoxicating and rapturous. Add in the jingling of the nguga ankle bells and the harsh tones of the izeze and Hukwe’s voice and it is like a sound bath, a whole overbearing atmosphere of ecstatic noise.

Those are a lot of words attempting and failing to describe the indescribable. It’s no wonder why, after Hukwe Zawose first performed in the UK, he was invited back again and again until his death at 65 in 2003. His music was something incredibly special and, together with Charles Zawose who died just one year later, remains sorely missed.