music
Ngonidzashe Kambarami
Born in the ghetto of Mabvuku on the 19th of October 1983, I was (mis)educated at Donnybrook Primary School, Mabvuku High and then Foundation College between 1989 and 2002.
Coming from a family that loves music, I started singing privately for my schoolfriends at Mabvuku High. In 2002, I entered the Zimbabwe Television (ZTV) talent show Spotlight singing the song Donna together with Rocqui, Ruth, Newel and Jimmy who called themselves another tribe. Our performance was judged the best in the Urban Contemporary segment and started a shortlived relationship with the band another tribe during which we tried to record an album with a popular Zimbabwean producer but failed.
Afterwards, I recorded the song 'Ndiwe Chete' on the 3rd of December 2002 with ThatSquad Studios and basically launched my professional music career. After the song received widespread acceptance on radio, ThatSquad Studios graciously allowed me to record an album with them and I became their first recording artiste.
My Album 'Ndinoimba' went on to become one of the most successful albums by a new artiste in Zimbabwe for the year 2003 with the songs 'Ndiwe Chete' and 'Wakaenda' enjoying generous airplay and public acceptance on National radio for which I am very grateful. 'Wakaenda' ended the year at number 2 on the then 3FM's Top 100 for the year 2003 which was quite an unbelievable achievement for me considering that it the song only came into the charts later in that year.
In 2004, I recorded a new album under my own label '4Rooms of Love' using my company 'Highway Entertainment' as the marketing vehicle. The 12 track album, 'Angu Mashoko' was launched on the 21st of October a few days after my 21st birthday and has had some relative success on the Zimbabwean music scene. The songs 'Shamwari', 'Angela' and 'Mazakwatira' have been kindly received to my pleasant surprise.
In between my first and my second album, I changed the manner in which I perform my music. Whilst my first album was produced using only electronic music production techniques and made no use of actual instruments except for electronic keyboards, I started experimenting with live instruments on my second album. So you will catch John Jaizi's powerful guitar on Shamwari and Brian Ngolomi plays bass guitar on both Angela and Nherera. Judging from the reception of both Angela and Shamwari, it seems as if the experiment has been reasonably successful and I plan to continue with this on my next project.
Three years on, and I have come back with my latest production iDenderedzwa which launches in a few days time in Harare and will soon be available for the international market. I haven't uploaded any full tracks from this album, but I have prepared the CD sampler that appears in first position on my playlist above. It has snippets of all the 12 tracks that are on the album, and I'd love to hear your comments on what you think of it.