Jah Prayzah has thrown his keys to the urban contemporary movement down the floor of the sea.
His latest album, Jerusarema, available through Jive Zimbabwe, tours deeper into the sounds of the far south.
The eleven-track album features tracks “Jerusarema,” “Eriza,” “Roots,” with Luciano (the Messenger),” “Ndoenda,” “Daira,” Chinamira,” “Vanorodza Miseve,” “Tiise Maoko,” “Zama,” “Zenze” and “Taura.”
The album is yet another stellar effort from the Third Generation frontman who has established himself as one of the greatest voices to emerge from the land through years of hard work and sheer genius.
He ropes in Keith Farquahason for mixing and mastering and additional keyboards and former Black Spirits marimba prodigy Charles Chipanga.
He maintains his rich sound with a traditional bias.
The Uzumba-raised artist has previously laced his offerings, beginning with “Rairai,” off “Rudo Nerunyararo,” with hints of traditional influence.
But the homely cultural flavour, then expressed in isolated tracks like “Dande,” off “Ngwarira Kuparara,” and “Machembere,” off “Tsviriyo” remained subdued, like a gradual pilot project, as Jah Prayzah continued to sell on the urban tip.
It was an inventive quest for establishment, good so because his exclusive brand survived eviction when urban groove breathed its last in the Zimdancehall holocaust.
He peaked with “Tsviriyo,” possibly his biggest album to date, where he blended different influences, with jams as varied as “Tsamba,” “Mwanasikana” and the title track, into something for everyone.
The next offering, “Kumbumura Mhute,” seemed bent on defining a distinctive sound for the artist.
It was old style fully pronounced, with almost negligible exceptions.
It thud shut the artist’s space in the youth movement.
Zima (2014 edition) confirmed this changeover by awarding Jah Prayzah an award for traditional music, something which may not have been possible with his previous albums.
Traditional thoroughbreds, notably Thomas Mapfumo, gave it up to the young artist.
Reviewers were not as charmed and the public apparently warmed up to the album when the visuals came along late last year.
Still basking in his historic sweep of the Nama (2014) awards, he walked away empty-handed after filing in “Kumbura Mhute” as the specimen of his craftsmanship earlier this year.
Jah Prayzah maintained that the album was his best, in any case, something an artist is expected to say for a current album.
If critics were riled by the changeover, Jah Prayzah seems to be saying he has his feet where he wants them to be.
The latest album further positions him as a determined proponent of traditional music.
The title of the album, “Jerusarema,” immediately provokes a question mark, given its spiritual ambiguity.
Is Jah Prayzah joining the long list of showbiz converts, as hinted on his “Gore Rapera” duet with Fungisai in 2013?
Or could the track be a soja-style rendition of Sibalo’s “Jerusalem?”
As a matter of fact, “Jerusarema” is a fully fledged traditional offering.
Aside the vintage mbira flair, Jah Prayzah is even invoking the ancestors on the title track and at least one other track.
It is his homage to the Jerusarema dance, which evolved out of the Mbede dance, a fertility rite in its historical Murehwa context.
As sure as tastes contrast, I am not carried along by most of the tracks on this offering, not least because of some rigid scruples, but also because the album is almost a clean departure from Jah Prayzah as I originally admired him.
The sound is actually richer but there are missing personae.
The essential Jah Prayzah, for me, is the success-hungry youngster who sang about the world as youths know it – ambition, conviction, defiance, hard work, obscurity, unrequited love, hungry days, frustrated trust, hard times when you cannot underwrite your girl’s hairdo, when city forces conspire against you, when family love is the anchor that holds.
The Budiriro chanter who exuded his stubborn conviction about a room for him at the top, with lyrics like “Mukombe ndichatora kunyange mukazviramba/ Handina kurasa chivimbo kubva zvandakavamba (I am bound for the prize, even if you resist/ I have not lost conviction from the beginning)” even as the public hardly seemed to notice.
The then obscure genius who pleaded “Vhurai mukova Baba/ Yava nguva makambopfiga (Place an open door before me, Father/ I have been in the cold for too long.”
The emotive purveyor of love’s sunny side and love’s frustrations with memorable jams like “Taura,” “Sungano Yerudo,” and “Chirangano.”
For others, it is certainly the dancefloor ditties like “Gochi Gochi,” and “Tsviriyo.”
Yet others, hail a Jah Prayzah whom they perceive to be the proverbial wine that improves with age, the Jah Prayzah who is excavating the past to serve an older, as such, more business-wise, market.
For me, this niche-driven Jah Prayzah does not live up to early projections.
He no longer speaks power to the struggling youth. Rather, of his dominance, of the paranoia that comes with being at the top – admittedly something he has earned over the years.
That he remains hugely popular and one of the best live performers in the land, however, cannot be queried.
And he has not entirely left the community for the dancefloor.
“Roots,” his duet with Jamaican reggae thoroughbred, Luciano is as exciting as it drops down consciousness.
Indeed, one of the attributes of Jah Prayzah’s genius is his ability to flawlessly blend with an artist – gospel, katekwe, afro-pop, dancehall, reggae, urban groove, sungura, dendera, jazz, name them.
“And while you’re on your mission/ Don’t you lose your origination (hope I captured that right) / It’s your round trip ticket to life/ And when you’re at the top/ You’d see that all you got/ It’s your roots that keep you alive,” Luciano counsels on Roots.
It is a reminder to stay connected to one’s family, a message reiterated in several of Jah Prayzah’s jams including the duet, “Kumusha,” with Somandla Ndebele, off “Ngwarira Kuparara,” and “Kumagumo,” off “Kumbumura Mhute.”
The track is one of my favourite all-time Jah Prayzah songs. Hopefully, it opens more international doors for the artist.
Taking on from his spiritual strivings on “Zororo,” off “Sungano Yerudo,” he anticipates afterlife on two of the tracks, “Ndoenda” and “Tiise Maoko,” asking God to assure him of a secure place in Jerusarema (this time, heavenly Jerusalem not the Mbede variant).
Another jam encourages a suitor to remain determined in his pursuit for a virtuous woman’s hand in marriage, although his entreaty for her love is long and difficult like negotiations for the Global Political Agreement.
Those who are for dance tracks will probably for “Chinamira,” a track as apparently meaningless but adapted to stretch the ghetto circuit, as Sulumani and Soul Jah Love’s “Chibaba Chenyuchi.”
“Eriza” where the muse of the jam is compared to Katarina, Mukadota’s animated sidewoman, who must also have been an Elizabeth, is also a fast-paced dance track which may prove to be a crowd’s favourite at shows.
My personal favourite is the remix to “Taura,” this time flavoured with a jazzy flair, while retaining the emotive effects of the original track off “Rudo Nerunyararo.”
On the whole, Jah Prayzah is to be credited for defying age to be an authentic cultural ambassador.