I hear the hum of people and see the orange glow of firelight from 200 yards away. Where Alberto and I are walking, there is no light. The moon is far below the horizon and the cloudless night has turned the air to ice so that it bites your nostrils upon each breath. We listen to our feet pacing in a steady rhythm towards the light which is growing stronger in front of us. We finally reach the town, Nhahumwe, a buzzing metropolis at this time of night. The “town” consists of about 7 huts lined up in a row along the main path. While power lines pass directly over the path on the way to the district capital of Chibabava, no one in Nhahumwe actually has electricity. There is one small stall selling local beverages which brazenly totes one incandescent bulb, powered by a car battery. We continue on down the main path to where the firelight and commotion is originating from. People have been talking about this “espectáculo” in Nhahumwe for days now and it is finally here; there is a palpable excitement in the air. I am not sure exactly what this “espectáculo” has in store, but I will soon find out. Gaggles of people mill around in the dark on the outside of a crudely constructed canvas wall. Taller people crane their necks to get a glimpse of what is happening on the other side of the canvas barrier. Children and miniature adults climb on top of each other or search for holes in the canvas to see the spectacle. I pay the 10mt (25 cents) cover charge for Alberto and I to walk through the flap and join the party.
Inside, the party has the feel of a night club you paid too much to get into. All the cool people stayed in the street and you walked in to an over-hyped club, paying $10 for drinks, and surrounded by a bunch of drunk yuppies. But Mozambican style. There are about 20 people on the inside of the canvas wall, as no one else could afford to come in. The enclosed space is no more than 30 feet by 10 feet and is open to the air on this moonless night. At the back by the door-flap, a fire pit glows as half of the patrons sit around it, stoking it and warming themselves in the crisp night air. In the front the entertainment for the night, a local “band,” prepares for their set, which I’ve been told will go all through the night until dawn. There are three members of their tawdry crew. A kid, about 10 years old, sits in a stool at the helms of the drum battery. At first glance, especially in the diffuse light of the night, his drum set seems to be a complete modern-style kit. Upon closer inspection, however, I see that everything is made out of local materials – the bass drum an oil barrel sliced in half; the cymbals circular cuttings of tin roofing studded with bottle caps and propped up on a tripod made of tied sticks; the toms carved out tree trunks with canvas and animal skins spread tightly across the surface. Beside him, an older man wearing a second hand suit coat over a poorly matched Mickey Mouse sweatshirt totes an electric guitar. Much like the drum-set, the guitar is a very organic creation. Four string stretch from their wooden pegs in the neck along the length of the guitar coming to rest on a larger board where he does the strumming. Two exposed wires reach up under to string-bed to form some sort of pick-up and plug into an old 1980s tape player. Person number three is hard to spot immediately. He stands hauntingly in a shadow in the corner of the hut wearing an oversized hoodie and strumming a guitar as crude and improvised as person number two.
I am curious how they are going perform as a rock band without electricity. There is a motley assemblage of 4 or 5 small amps and used radio speakers stacked on top of each other and rigged up by wires in front of the band. I lean over and ask Alberto, ‘how are they going to play their guitars without power?” As if answering my question, the drummer kicks the bass drum and lays into a shrill dance rhythm. Alberto says, “Car battery,” and then the guitars slap into action. It’s not the kind of electrifying entrance you would expect to see in a rock arena, or a bar stage for the matter, but it’s an entrance none the less. I have to turn my head sideways and clean out my ears just to make sure I’m not missing something. While I am sure that the drummer is playing, I am still not entirely sure that the guitarists are playing. There is a faint hum coming from the area where the once-impressive stack of speakers is resting and the guitarists appear to be moving their fingers. I ask Alberto if there is something wrong with the speakers; “it’s a little weak isn’t it?” “Car battery,” he says. So this is it. Apparently a concert run on car batteries isn’t quite the same ear-splitting experience as a concert you might walk into in the states. I approach the band to hear the music more clearly and the hum that I had heard before turns into an audible pattern of notes. The guitarist plays an upbeat Zimbabwean rhythm – duh da da duh da da duh duh duh – that repeats over and over and over…and over. I get used to the music and start to feel the rhythm. The few people inside the hut start dancing and from the clamor I hear outside the hut I can tell that the gaggles of people craning their necks have also started to dance.
The dance that accompanies this music is indescribable. Knees are wobbling, hips are gyrating, and feet arte kicking up dust in a rapid blur of stomps. It almost reminds me or Riverdance, but with a little more style. From the waist up, they are motionless, eyes fixed and back straight, but from the waist down it is controlled chaos with movements that I can’t even begin to separate. I jump into the roped off dancing area and give it my best anyway. The crowd erupts. As more curious eyes turn, I notice that I am surrounded by a circle of onlookers with all eyes focused on my haplessly twirling feet. I’m trying to learn the dance. I realize, however, that while I have had about 10 minutes of observation to absorb and execute all of the tortuous vibrations needed, the people around me have been practicing their whole lives. When there are no TVs, playpens, jungle-gyms, malls, soccer trips, Nerf guns, Nintendos, trampolines, swimming pools or family vacations, sometimes all there to do is pull out the pocket transistor radio, buzzing and hissing in all of its glory, and dance. I am no match for that experience. I am at best a sideshow attempt to fit in that they seem to appreciate and tend to laugh at – a gigantic white man glowing in the obscure starlight shaking like in a crazed baboon. After not too long I begin to feel the cardio. This is a work out. Take off the sweatshirt. I’m starting to get it. I’ll take anyone on. Jump into the circle and let’s go head to head. We’re kicking up so much dust that the spectators have to cover their noses. When is this song going to end? The guitar player has been playing the same three notes for 15 minutes like a skipping disc. I tap out of the circle, an icey sweat dripping down my nose. The band seems to be just getting started. The same song that I danced to ends up playing for another 20 minutes on repeat, those three notes over and over and over set to a shrill hi-hat rhythm on the cut-out tin roofing that the drummer is blasting away at.
After the tenth stumbling drunk comes up to me reeking of neepa – a local drink that burns like gasoline – and congratulating me on how well I dance for a muzungue I decide that it’s time to leave. As Alberto and I walk off into the darkness, the sounds of the tinny battery-powered guitars, and the 10 year old pounding out rhythms on the oil barrel-bottle-cap-drum-set fade into the trees that envelope our journey home. I remember the concerts that I used to play back in the states with their 6 foot amps, 15 piece drum kits and multi-track sound-boards and can’t imagine how this crude but charming midnight “espetáculo” could have ever seemed normal.
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