Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
Dumi Maraire Jnr, known also by his stage name, Draze, does not feel the pressure to live up to the legacies left by his father and sister.
For most musicians, this would not be a particularly boisterous statement to make. Rarely do artistes have to tiptoe carefully behind the footprints left by their fathers or siblings.
However, when your father, the man who gave you his name at birth, is Dumi Maraire, the grandmaster of the mbira and your sister is Chiwoniso Maraire, perhaps one of the most revered Zimbabwean musicians of all time, then that statement begins to take a different dimension.
Yet, despite an awareness that he shares DNA with some of Zimbabwe’s most accomplished musical icons, that fact does little to dull Draze’s eagerness to carve out his own path. He is from music royalty, yes, a prince born to a mbira dynasty, but he is here to walk his own path, even when the echoes of his family’s illustrious music never seem to fade into the background.
“I feel zero pressure to build on their legacies,” he told Sunday Life in an interview. “However, I am one hundred percent excited to build on what they have already built. But it is not from a pressure standpoint. I feel privileged to be following in their footsteps. I am watching people thrust me into that space and for me, I feel like it’s what it means to be a part of this family. I think it’s what they would want. One day my daughter Nyasha will come and contribute what she contributes. It’s about building blocks and when you’re done, it’s the next person’s turn.”
While he acknowledged a desire to carve out his own path, Draze also highlighted the fact that his family had ultimately been the greatest influence on his music.
“My family has shaped everything in terms of how I view music. My core and base frame of how I view music, I learnt from them. I learnt how to harmonise from them, I learnt how to see music from them because I don’t read music, I see it, I feel it. Music is like colour and I learnt how to see colours and make them connect with my own to find my voice. So, my family has been huge and instrumental in shaping the way I see music but most importantly my family enabled me to see music as a structure. We are very principled and we have strong convictions and there is a level of respect for music. There’s a level of depth that we tend to reach into when we are doing music. I am not a shallow artiste and the reason is that my father, my sister, my mother and my brother weren’t shallow. I learnt how to delve deep and speak to the issues of life,” he said.
Chiwoniso Maraire
In the United States, Draze has carved out a niche for himself as a hip-hop artiste fusing uniquely African sounds and rhythms into a fairly modern urban artform. It has seen him contribute music to films for TV shows and films, while his own albums have been received well. At the core of this, is his relationship with marimba and the mbira, instruments that have defined the Maraire family.
“To be honest, I learnt how to play the mbira and the marimba from my mother. She was very diligent in making sure that I learnt these instruments. Growing up, all of my older siblings were better than me, I just wasn’t very good so much so that so many people were sure I was never going to be able to play. So much so, that many people thought I would never be able to play. But my mum took the time to work and work and work until something started to click. It just took a long time for me to even get decent at it. I think when it comes to mastering these instruments, its one-part talent, one-part hard work and one-part soul. I think you need those elements to master the craft. I by no means think I am a master. I’m pretty good at marimba and I am okay at mbira. I can play better than the average person but I am not as good as my father, brother or sister but I am okay with that. Mastering it takes time but spiritually you have to connect with it. I would say my mother gave me gift but my father perfected me and got me to where I am now,” he said.
Despite his father being widely acknowledged as a grandmaster of the mbira, Draze said he had never felt the need to be rigidly loyal to the instrument. Instead, he was driven by the desire to push the bounds of experimentation, fusing the mbira with ear-thumping beats from the streets of Seattle.
“Oddly enough, I have never had the pressure to become a strictly mbira or marimba player at all. I think that’s because most of life, while I did live in Dangamvura as a child, most of my life I spent in Seattle and in Seattle they just know me as a dude from the hood. When you walk down the street, they are not just going to know that dude is Zimbabwean, you have to know me before you embrace me as such. They would have been shocked if I had done a strictly mbira or marimba album. Everything about my swag and the way I carry myself, is and was hip-hop. I think that’s the expression that people expected from me,” he said.
Having lived bits of his life in both the United States and Zimbabwe, Draze might seem like a man caught between two worlds. However, the wordsmith said he did not see his upbringing in that light, but was instead inspired by a desire to bridge the gap between Dangamvura and Seattle.
“I was born in Seattle Washington, and then when I was in the first grade, my mum sent me and my siblings to live with my grandmother in Dangamvura. We returned to the US but we go back to Zimbabwe every few years to visit family. I never felt any levels of identity issues or being stuck in between two worlds. Looking at it, I guess I was always unique, given that when I was in Seattle, I was never the descendent of a slave so there was a level of trauma that I didn’t have, that my brothers and sisters around me actually had. When I was in Zimbabwe, I didn’t speak Shona so people would look at me and say he is one of us, but he feels different. For me, I never felt stuck because all of this felt normal to me. It was just who I was,” he said.
This clash of worlds is best reflected in his latest single, Mazvita, which features his mother and sister. It is a collision of culture that shows Draze’s upbringing in its proper light.
“The reception to my new single has been overwhelmingly and amazing. I think I have been amazed by people’s appreciation of the depths and the layers of what is in this track from the marimba to having my mother and my sister on it to the 808 drums and the hip-hop. People are really refreshed by this sound and it’s encouraging me as I move to this album that’s coming out that people are waiting for it and hungry for it. I couldn’t be any more pleased with how people have received both in Zimbabwe and America. The purpose of this song is to be a bridge, to bring these two worlds together and I think we are starting to do that,” he said.
As the world of music still looks back on the bright flame of Chiwoniso’s life and career, which still burns well after her death, Draze said he is eager to bring his own interpretation of the fusion of mbira and urban music.
“My sister was a master of fusing the mbira with urban influences and I am following in her footsteps. I might be doing it with a different genre as I am purely just hip-hop but it’s still fusion nonetheless. I am doing it because its authentically who I am. I am truly Zimbabwean and I am truly hip-hop so when I am doing this, I am being truly who I am as an artiste,” he said.