Becoming The Muse

Yesteryear Music: Zim Urban Grooves and 90s Afrobeats

Until a couple of years back, I had no appreciation for the music streaming platform Spotify.  I was content with Youtube, although I found it inconvenient in the way one could not exit the mobile app and still play music… (unless you are on the premium subscription, which for some reason is not available in my region)

My damascene conversion to being a Spotify fan begun whilst I was searching the internet, for a year 2000 compilation album called The Future by Shamiso Music featuring various artists. This music studio single-handedly launched the Zimbabwean Urban Grooves era of music.

I was feeling nostalgic and my online search led me to Spotify which in a pleasing turn of events had the album which I listened on repeat till the cows came home.

This new “sound” had been birthed in response to a government mandate by the then Minister Of Properganda Information and Publicity that compelled local broadcasters to only play 100% local content. Due to the dearth of international music local artists rose up to fill the gap, creating our own blend of RnB and Hip Hop music which became known as Urban Grooves.

 In the absence of the ideal, the present becomes the ideal.

Urban Grooves caught on defining a new era in Zimbabwe’s music scene, before this we hadn’t really had a more home-grown sound except maybe Sungura Music – which had roots in East African kanindo/benga music.

The Sungura Music genre got its name from name of the Record Label that was printed on the vinyl records, Sungura, which is Swahili for a hare. The records became popular in Zimbabwe and people referred to them as Sungura Music and the name stuck.

My love affair with Spotify intensified after I discovered one could also make public playlists and invite people from the internet to listen and add their own music. This led me down the rabbit hole of the Afrobeats music and Afropop Sounds that we watched on musical programmes on ZBC TV which I curated into a playlist with the help of friends from the internet.

The thing with good music is that it is timeless or maybe it’s the rose-coloured galsses of nostalgia, of life back at a time when life was simpler, when we didn’t have rolling power cuts when you could buy a palmful of candy for change, before autotune voices and hard to hear lyrics, and even when you didnt understand the language a song was sang in, you could still dance to it.

Here’s a playlist of 90s Afrobeats,

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