A night with Giddes

The Giddes Chalamanda you meet in the early hours of a Monday, seated on one of the couches of Scallas Café, is not the same one you saw moments ago on the stage.

For now, on this couch, Giddes is that octogenarian. With a face that presents him as one nursing the worries or the pleasures of old age. He is – if his face can be used as a mirror into his soul – lost in a world of his own. As a few besotted fans come, sit next him, for a selfie, he can neither smile nor frown into the camera. He just exists in his space. The young fans are invaders. Neither unwelcome nor welcome. The look on his face communicates none of that. 

Yet, minutes before – in the late hours of 16 December, a Sunday – Giddes had forgotten himself on stage. But, forgotten is not the word. Remembered must be.

The time he walked on stage, welcomed by Davis Njobvu of the Edgar and Davis Band, Giddess had remembered himself. His passion. 

It had been a long night. The promise of Giddes Chalamanda appearing on stage, in his valour of old age, had not been honoured until after 11 pm. Before him, Njobvu had led the band in performing their own music and covers of other songs with the height being Njobvu’s own cover of Robert Gwirani and Gasteni Jonathan’s Tsoka liyenda.

Around 10 pm, a young man who had been dancing under the inspiration of the strong drink, had told off his friend.

His friend, not seemingly high on alcohol, had told him it was getting late. They should get home.

“Not until after I see Giddes perform, I can’t leave without Giddes performing,” he had told his friend.

I saw frustration on that his friend’s face. Quite a disappointed man. I did not know whether to feel sorry for him or celebrate the fact that a young man, seemingly the new breed of the middle class, had such a decent taste of music.

After 11 however, when Giddes appeared on stage, I did not see the young man among the fans that mobbed Giddes for photos and videos. Even after the madness around Giddes had retreated onto the dance floor and only a few of us stood closer to the legend of Malawi music that is Giddes, the young man who could not go home until after watching Giddes, was nowhere to be seen.

He was not, most likely, a witness of that magical moment.

That moment was when Giddes was handed over the mic. He started with the song Napolo.

In that moment, for me, I thought I was hypnotised. I had never seen Giddes perform this close, so it might be understandable – the hypnosis. As his old voice struggled to out-noise the cacophony of rhythm from the band, I felt that I was standing in the presence of awe.

It was as if I was witnessing legend and history, only that this time they were not served by biased narratives. They were, so to argue, living in flesh and blood and I had been privileged to watch them so I can as well be a biased narrator (the duty I am fulfilling right now).

The time Giddes shifted gears to sing Che Meli, the hypnosis was in full effect. Not just to me, I can say with bias. The quiet observations on the dance floor accompanied by gentle certain steps spoke more of a crowd climbing down from cloud nine who had sang on top of their voices just a number before.

Then, after an echo demanding Buffalo Soldier, he sang it – or rather he started singing it. Just as he was to cross over to the chorus of the song, the band halted. Davis interrupted with no background instrumentation:

“Mr Giddes Chalamanda, who composed this song?”

“I did.”

“In what year?”

“In 1972, then in 1978 Bob Marley made his own composition of the same title.”

I hope I have got the years right but if I have not then let me just summarise: an octogenarian from some remote corner of Malawi claims he composed a song titled Buffalo soldier years before the global icon Bob Marley composed his. And, yes, he might be right. The Buffalo Soldier term dates from the 1800s. The beauty – or the irony – in the two compositions is how each conceptualises Buffalo Soldiers.

Whereas Giddes’ composition is more of an admiration for the Buffalo Soldiers and the spaces they inhabit – America in this case – Marley actually decries the situation of the Buffalo soldier who was ‘stolen’ from Africa.

That bit of history out, Giddes was back on the song. Starting from that guitar that introduces the song, only this time it was not played by him. The audience joined, but mostly where he sings that yo! Yo! Yo! Yo! Sound which, coincidentally, features on Marley’s song as well – albeit with a far much faster tempo.

He climbed down that ladder of (met) wishes in Buffalo Soldier to the songs of heartbreak that Giddes has sang in good share. There were two moments I saw the fatigue of age on Giddes’ face metamorphose into the flame of youthfulness: the times he sang Ndikulira Meli and the time he sang Ngondo Amao (Nthawi zina).

For a moment, I halted in my steps. I felt transported. I was a time traveller. Went back to the time Giddes was young. Perhaps, it was not fictional that his wife really left. Maybe his wife really left for Zambia and never came back. The glow on his face could hardly be evoked by fiction – but who knows?

Even when he moved away from that rant targeted at a deserting wife, to now sing about fears he does have (or used to have) other times of the nightmares he has (had) of his father (or mother) dying and him being left alone, Giddes had that look on his face that accentuated that the fears were as raw as they were when he composed the song in his heydays.

Then, the tempo slackened. Giddes was aging out of that stage. He performed Mkazi ndi mawaya of course but the crowd wasn't hanging on it as they did with the other songs.

When he took leave, after slightly less than an hour of performing, it was Lulu that was invited to just greet the audience. It was a beautiful juxtaposition of musical times. But, the night of course had already belonged  to Giddes.