SALUM ABDALLAH YAZIDU OF CUBAN MARIMBA BAND

 In 2019 a Tanzanian film production company Kijiweni Productions started shooting the film Vuta N’kuvute, a story adapted from a book written by  Shafi Adam Shafi. It was a story of the love life between a Zanzibari boy Denge, who wanted the British colonialists to leave Zanzibar, and an Indian girl Yasmin who had escaped from her old Indian husband whom she had been married to against her will. The story is set in Zanzibar in the 50s.

In the film, there was a part where the then great Salum Abdallah and his band the Cuban Marimba from Morogoro performed in Zanzibar, That show was attended by Denge and his friends. I was lucky to be picked to research the type of music that was performed by Salum Abdallah and his band in those years, and eventually, I was cast 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’s fatal accident!!!!!!

 On November 18, 1965, a Thursday,  Morogoro town was expecting a visit from the then president Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere and 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, now 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, the 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 a great honour 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, also ran 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 musicians 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 at the Community Center hall, and their colleagues, the Morogoro Jazz Band, were to perform in another hall at Kichangani ward.
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, for many years afterwards it remained a controversial 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. A 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 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 just superficial pain that would go away in a short time they discharged him and told him to report the next morning. At that time the hospital did not have an X-ray machine, 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 would be okay. They headed to their clubhouse prepared food and ate happily. They even started to be a joke, one of them saying, “When the Arab recovers, he will compose a song 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 wildfire 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 Salum had prepared for starting a new shop.
 There is another version of what happened that day, the other version says after the doctors at the hospital confirmed Salum had died, the Chief Regional Doctor drove his car to Salum’s house parked his car outside the musician’s 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 have a chance just to 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 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 graveyard and carried the coffin to SAY’s resting place.

Salum Abdallah’s song  EE Mola wangu (OH My Lord) which he composed shortly before his death, brought many interpretations especially due to the circumstances of his death. Here are a few lines of the song ;

O my Lord O my Lord,

Strip me of the world,

People of the world,

Are planning 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 finally the accident gets me

While crying over my dead body

I will tell God

How I was treated in the world

His fans believed Salum knew someone wanted him dead, that’s why he composed the song.

It is now 59 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 airwaves 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