Belief in witchcraft is a culture that has existed in all human societies for thousands of years. History and various religious scriptures remind us of this through different interpretations. One might typically assume that as development and education increase, and scientific answers become available about various matters, belief in witchcraft would diminish and disappear. However, it is clear the journey is still long, for if you walk through many Tanzanian neighbourhoods, you will see signboards indicating that belief is still present and possibly even growing. Advertisements by witch doctors and religious leaders claiming they can ‘cleanse stars,’ ‘remove spirits,’ help people get job promotions, pass exams, and so on, are very common in society.
The music industry, being part of the Tanzanian society, has not escaped being touched by this problem. Having been in the music industry for over 50 years, I have seen and heard many incidents indicating that belief in witchcraft is alive in my beloved industry. I am narrating here things I have seen and heard without mentioning the names of groups or people, but I assure you that everything contained in this writing is true.
The first time I started seeing the strength of these beliefs ‘live’ was when I joined a band that later became very famous in its time.
To understand the incident itself, let me provide some background first. In those days, every Tuesday morning, starting around 3:15 AM, Radio Tanzania Dar es Salaam (RTD) had a program called ‘Misakato.’ It was a program that premiered new songs recorded in RTD’s studios. It was a very sweet program; the announcer would mention the names of all participants and the backgrounds of some participants while new songs were played. It was a very important program for musicians because new songs could be heard nationwide. Often, after this program, if the songs pleased people, bands would start receiving invitations from all over the country.
Our band was new, and we had recorded for the first time. We had all agreed to meet at our leader’s house to listen to our new songs together. As we sat waiting for the program to start, our band secretary entered and asked for a charcoal stove from our leader’s wife, then moved that stove close to the radio. When the program started, as each of our new songs was played, he began burning some strange-smelling leaves he had come with in the charcoal stove, and he held the radio so that the smoke from the leaves engulfed the radio.
After the program ended, the leaders assured us our songs would be a hit with everyone who heard them that day. It was my first time seeing superstition associated with music.
It didn’t take long to discover that our leaders firmly believed that our band’s progress depended on witchcraft. After that, many incidents continued until we eventually became accustomed to our band leader’s attachment to superstitions.
There was a time, we even went to the extent of having a ‘resident witch doctor’. A witch doctor who it was claimed, had made a famous soccer team win a trophy and become national champions, was introduced to us as our new band witch doctor. This fellow was contracted by the band, and his job was to sit by the entrance of the venue where we played, pretending to be an orange seller. He claimed that every time he peeled an orange, customers would flow into the hall. The band’s income came from gate revenue; the more that flowed into our shows, the better the income for the musicians. This witch doctor stayed with us and eventually became like one of the musicians in the band; we attended our rehearsals, and we even travelled with him on our tours to various regions. But when it became apparent he had no contribution to our business, he was dismissed. He did not go lightly, he cursed everybody and promised to destroy the band.
Our band’s efforts to seek fame through witchcraft went so far that the band traveled to Mpanda. When we arrived there, the band leaders went to a witch doctor and did their thing, which even involved slaughtering a goat. I think the condition was that all of us musicians had to eat a piece of that sacrificial goat. To this day, I don’t know the fate of that goat’s meat because the musicians went on strike, refusing to even touch that goat meat. On that trip, the band leader’s entire neck was full of incisions made by the witch doctor; the neck had so many tiny cuts that he began wearing a polo-necked shirt, or he would have a scarf around his neck even on very hot days in the Dar es Salaam heat. And also from that time, the microphone he had also taken to the witch doctor was never used by anybody else except him. And that’s how it was until I left the band.
There were so many superstitious beliefs flying around, the band members began to distrust each other. It didn’t take long after the band began to lose popularity for the band leader to call a meeting and tell us that he had been told by his witch doctor that the band’s decline was due to one of the band members bewitching the band. A threat was then issued that if the suspect did not confess and ask for forgiveness, the healer would make the culprit insane. No one ever asked for forgiveness, and no one suffered from insanity.
Before I left the band, two musicians decided to quit our band. Out of fear of being bewitched, they returned the band uniforms with shirts slit under the armpits and pants with slits at the seams of the legs, which was from the belief that those were the sweaty parts that could be used by the band leader, through witchcraft, to ruin their lives.
I once joined a band that had a reputation for practicing black magic, but it was a good, famous band with good benefits, so I joined. The first time that I got proof that the rumors of superstition were true was the day we performed a double-bill show at one venue. The double-bill attracted a large crowd, thus being profitable for both bands. But there was a problem of superstition; there was a belief that some bands used magic to destroy the rival band if the band lacked proper protection. My band had brought a witch doctor who came with all his paraphernalia and hid in one corner of the venue doing his things while the music was playing.
Due to these complex beliefs, even musicians visiting each other’s bands was a problem, because if a musician from another band was seen at a venue, the band on stage would be uneasy.
There were many stories about how far bands would go to get customers. There was a band that was said to do very strange things after every show. Its leaders would go around the venue collecting bottle caps from sodas and beers that had been drunk by the patrons. They would also collect leftover food from the music lovers who had attended their show. It was even claimed that they would go into the ladies’ toilets to collect dirty water, and they would then go to perform witchcraft so that those who attended their show wouldn’t attend any other band except theirs. There were even rumors of a band that had a contract where it was obliged to provide a human sacrifice every certain period so that its fame wouldn’t wane. Thus, band leaders would lose children, and even visiting musicians in those bands would be found dead. When such deaths occurred, underground rumors would spread claiming those deaths were part of providing sacrifices. Two bands that had a great rivalry in Dar es Salaam city were even rumored to have wanted to place witchcraft in the main water source supplying the city.
When AIDS began killing musicians for the first time, the deaths were mostly associated with witchcraft. A friend of mine was lying very sick in bed when I visited him. He whispered to me, ‘Shall I give you a secret? I’m going to die, but I’m being killed by my fellow musicians in the band. A healer has even given me the names of the culprit.’ A few weeks later, before this musician died, he told me, ‘My friend, I haven’t been bewitched or anything; this worm, it’s killing me’, meaning AIDS was killing him. He died a few days after telling me this. The big problem was that his relatives remained with the belief that he had been bewitched by his fellow musicians. The relatives withheld all the band equipment he had left behind, threatening that any musician who pursued that equipment would be harmed.
Beliefs in superstition are still continuing even in the current generation of music. A famous producer has come forward and warned artists not to do their superstitious activities in his studio. In one program aired on a certain television channel, a female musician explained in detail how she fortified herself by taking a bath at a crossroad, under a tree, and in the sea at night. It’s obvious witchcraft is still here to stay.
