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The Hallelujah Chicken Run Band
Taurai Maduna, Kubatana.net
March 15, 2005

It's impossible to talk about music of the late seventies and early eighties without mentioning The Hallelujah Chicken Run Band. Back then Thomas Mapfumo featured on drums.

The legendary Mapfumo has become synonymous - if not something of an icon - with the liberation struggle, partly because he continued to compose despite being incarcerated and having his music banned. Today however, the former critic of the Smith government is as critical of the Mugabe administration. Now Mr Mapfumo lives in self-imposed exile in the United States.

The Hallelujah Chicken Run Band also included other Zimbabwean musicians Lovemore Nyabenzi, Daram karanga, Joshua Hlomayi Dube, Robert Nakati and Elisa Jingo, to name a few.

Initially created to entertain workers at Mangura Copper Mine (with financial backing from mine chairman Mr Walker), the band became one of the trademark groups of the time. It was often invited to perform at fishing and gold clubs, as well as at weddings.

Gramma record's digitally re-mastered 18-track CD features the Band's hits from 1974 to 1979.

Its opening track is a song called "Mudzimu Ndiringe", which is about a man who was told that his life would be all right. But his children aren't attending school, he's unemployed and his home has been burnt down. He complains that life is tough adding he's approaching a traditional healer - and the prophets - for help.

While "Mudzimu Ndiringe" was written in the seventies, it is poignantly relevant today. Many of the issues raised during the struggle for liberation have re-surfaced today.

Another song bound to get tongues wagging is a track titled "Kare Nanhasi". Appropriately, it's about the expensive prices of commodities. The song compares the past - when people seemed to obtain goods with relative ease - with the present, when everything (including the price of beer) seems to go up daily.

But the album isn't only political; it features love songs too. In "Mukadzi wangu ndomuda" a man says he loves his wife, despite her being blind. He insists he still desires and admires her, no matter how others laugh at him or criticize.

This compilation is bound to rouse nostalgic feelings about the past, both good and the bad.

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