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| Salum Abdallah Yazidu |
In 2019 a Tanzanian film proction company Kijiweni Productions started shooting the film Vuta N'kuvute, which was adapted from a story written by Shafi Adam Shafi. It was a story of the love life between a Zanzibari boy Denge, who was also a freedom fighter wanting the colonialists to leave Zanzibar, and an Indian girl Yasmin who had escaped from her old Indian husband whom she had been married to by force. The story is set in Zanzibar the 50s.
In the film there was a part where Salum Abdallah and his band the Cuban Marimba from Morogoro, performed a show in Zanzibar, the show was attended by Denge and his friends. I was lucky to be picked to do a research on the type of music that was performed by Salum Abdallah and his band in those years, and eventually I was given the chance to play 'Salum Abdallah' himself in the film, which I considered a great honor.
Kijiweni Production, without their knowing about the
history of this great musician, had set the evening of 18th November 2019, as
the time for filming Salum Abdallah and
Cuban Marimba Band on stage scene. It was exactly 54 years to the time and date of Salum
Abdallah fatal accident!!!!!!
On November 18, 1965 which was a Thursday, Morogoro town was expecting a visit from the then president Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere and and the Vice President Rashid Mfaume Kawawa. The two top leaders were to officiate the opening ceremony of a large and important college for the development of agriculture in the country, the Morogoro College of Agriculture, which is currently known as SUA (Sokoine University of Agriculture). The then MP for Morogoro Oscar Kambona was also expected to attend the big event.
The two big bands from Morogoro town,
Cuban Marimba Band led by Salum Abdallah Yazidu, who liked to be known by the
abbreviation of his name ‘SAY’, and the Morogoro Jazz Band, were scheduled to
be visited by the country's leading leaders during their performances. It was
obviously a great honor for the musicians, and due to the great competition between the two bands, the musicians and the fans of the bands were all in high spirits waiting
for the battle of the bands on that important night in the history of Morogoro town.
SAY, in addition to being a musician,
was also in the business of supplying building materials, and at that
time he had a contract to provide sand and stones for a National Housing
Corporation project in Morogoro. At around six o'clock in the evening while preparing for the evening show, Ramadhan Mdidi
who was the assistant to one of Salum Abdallah's truck drivers, came to inform
Salum that one of his lorries was stuck in the sand in the riverbed where they
had been digging sand, so it was wise to remove the lorry immediately lest it
should rain. Salum Abdallah ordered the car to be towed. Salum sent one of his musician Waziri Nyange to oversee sound checking
at the hall where they were supposed to perform that evening, and he went with
another truck to tow the lorry stuck in the sand. On that day, the Cuban Marimba Band
were scheduled to play music in the Community Center hall, while their
colleagues, the Morogoro Jazz Band, were scheduled to play in another hall in
Kichangani.
Sadly about an hour later, a young man who
was in the truck that had left with
Salum Abdallah ran back to Salum Abdallah's house and informed them that there
had been an accident and Salum was badly injured. This accident was remarkable and
for many years afterwards it remained an topic among Cuban Marimba fans.
Darkness had already set in and just as the truck with Salum Abdallah was nearing Msamvu, the headlights suddenly went off and the car
swerved and hit a curb on the side of the road, but the lights came on again,
it was so quick that those on the back of the truck started laughing, but their
laughter stopped suddenly after realizing that the door on the side where Salum
was sitting was open and he had fallen off. They went back and found him lying
on the road moaning in pain. At the same time, a white man in a small car,
stopped by and picked two people from the scene, one went to Salum's house to
give information and the other went to take a taxi which came and took the injured Salum to the hospital. When he
arrived at the hospital, the doctors asked Salim to stretch his arms and then
his legs when he could, they assumed that he had not broken any bones but he was
having were just superficial pain that would go away in short time, in fact they discharged him and told him to report the next morning. At that time X-Ray technology was
still rare. Salum ordered his band not to perform that day, and went home, his friends stayed
with him throughout the pain filled night.
The next day, early in the morning SAY was taken back to hospital and underwent surgery and it was discovered
that he had broken his hip and a piece of bone ruptured his bladder, which due
to the delay in treatment things were now very critical. About one o'clock in the
afternoon, he was taken out of the operating room and his friends who were
waiting were told to go home and eat well so that they would come later to
donate blood for the patient. They went out happily knowing that things will be
okay. They headed to their club house and prepared food and ate happily. They
even started to be a joke, one of them saying, "When the Arab recovers, he
will come up with a very strong hit about this incident". Salum's father
was an Arab who had moved to Morogoro and married a local Mlugulu woman who was Salum's mother, and so Salum's friends used to call him 'the Arab'.
Unfortunately, about four in the afternoon they received the sad news that
Salum had passed away. News spread like wild fire and people began flocking to his house, they
found that the dead body had already been brought home and was placed in a room
that had Salum had prepared for starting a new shop.
There is another version of what happen that day, the other version says after Salum was known to have died, the Chief Regional Doctor drove
his car to Salum's house and parked his car outside the musicians house and
started crying, everybody around immediately understood that things had gone
wrong, so they were able to prepare the room for Salum's body, so his fans could see him for
the last time. It didn't take long for the news to spread in Morogoro and there
was so much commotion that police were needed for crowd control due to the large number of people
who gathered at the house of their beloved Salum SAY Abdallah.
The next day the situation became more
difficult when escorting the corpse to the cemetery, it was as if everyone
wanted to just even touch Salum's coffin to
show love, it was again necessary for
the police to be called to bring harmony. Salum's coffin was a carried from his mother’s
house in Nunge to Msamvu where he was
buried, although the deceased had many trucks his fans lovingly lined up from his home to the grave yard and carried the coffin to SAY's resting place.
Salum Abdallah's song EE Mola wangu (OH My Lord) that he composed
shortly before his death, brought many interpretations and especially due to
circumstances of his death. A few lines song said this;
O my Lord O my Lord,
Strip me of the world,
People of the world,
Are looking for ways to kill me ,
They want to bar my soul,
From Love and happiness,
And I give my greetings,
To my brothers and relatives
Of love and happiness
To ease them the pain
When the accident gets me
While crying over my dead body
I will tell God
How I was treated in the world
His fans believed he knew someone wanted
him dead, that’s why he composed the song.
It is now 58 years since the death of
Salum Abdallah Yazidu 'SAY', but Cuban Marimba Band songs such as, Wanawake wa
Tanzania, Shemeji Shemeji, Ngoma iko huku, can still be heard in the music
scene from time to time and even continue to be performed on stage with young musicians,
some of whom even their parents were not born the day Salum Abdallah died.
And the film Vuta N'kuvute has
reminded us again of the fame of the great Salum Abdallah.
MAY HE CONTINUE TO REST IN ETERNAL
PEACE
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