EVERY GENRE PROJECT - May 16 - Jit
Genre of the Day - Jit 🇿🇼
Album of the Day - True Jit by Bhundu Boys (1987)
May 16, 2024
Zimbabwe is a country of several unique distinctions. It has suffered from some of the worst hyperinflation in the world thanks to Robert Mugabe’s heinous abuse of the banks to print more money to appease those he was in debt to, it has the highest elephant population and highest amount of official languages in the world, and it’s the the originator of jit. Jit may not be as popular a fact about the country, but if you’re headed to the capital Harare’s way any time soon, some exposure is nonetheless essential to grasping its music history.
Zimbabwe was the final country to achieve independence from the British, just shy of only fifty years ago in 1980. Jit’s subsequent peak in the late ‘80s was the soundtrack to what should’ve been the nation’s post-colonial honeymoon phase. However, the ‘80s were partially an extension of the country’s bloody civil war ‘70s, although violence was more concentrated in the Matabeleland region as the Mugabe government cracked down on rival dissidents. However, this violence didn’t hinder the spread of joyful new sounds and arrangements of rhythms percolating around the continent into Zimbabwe.
Jit draws upon a multitude of local and continental influences: the sounds and political lyrical leanings of chimurenga that had arisen as a poppy appropriation of Shona (Zimbabwe’s majority ethnic group) folk music crossed with the rebellious, triumphant sentiment of the chimurenga uprisings against the British it was named for, the rhythmic sense of Congolese rumba, and South African jive. Jit and chimurenga both succeeded at cleverly transposing the melodic intervals of the mbira, a metal-tined finger-picked Shona instrument, to western guitars and basses. As shown by the video below, mbira-imitating melodies are infused with a distinct brightness.
Today’s genre is another case of one particular group single-handedly defining the genre’s peak productive period. The Bhundu Boys made enchanting jit that immediately found a global audience once it got pushed in the UK, as African genres were gaining notoriety and profitability because of forays of Western acts into the region’s music like Paul Simon. After the success of the UK label Discafrique-released Shabini in 1986, they had a mighty deal of buzz: Madonna requested them to be her opener for her London shows while touring in 1987.
For today’s album, the Boys sought to court even more western success via a team-up with Sade’s Diamond Life and Promise producer Robin Millar. With a producer of such stature as that, how could they not ascend into superstardom? Unfortunately, the album was not able to forge that commercial path, and some critics viewed it as eschewing the natural ease of their earlier albums for western studio sheen. It still holds up as RYM’s #2 album for jit. The number one is indeed their previous effort Shabini, but it was only available on YouTube—I generally just go to the next album for Spotify playlisting and scrobbling purposes. However, I should’ve just listened to it. I need to stop researching after listening, but blind listening is also fun.
Nonetheless, Robert Christgau called the set “still not half-bad;” just a wee bit of damning with faint praise. Most of the hallmarks of jit remain, even with Millar’s occasional injections of unnecessary synths and thin horns. The album is mostly in Shona, and the mbira-based guitar melodies and busy movement of rhythm on all parts are vibrant. Standout opener “Jit Jive” sounds like what The Smiths could’ve made if they grew up in Zimbabwe and experienced joy, with its shimmering, jangly guitar riffs and insistently uplifting chorus. The rich harmonies and rolling guitar melodies of “Ndoitasei” score another keeper track. Missteps are evident: even naming tracks “African Woman” and “Happy Birthday” seem to point south, and leaning back on formula doesn’t prevent them from floundering. While I couldn’t find translations for any Shona-language track, reviews seemed to indicate that a few songs contain more pointedly political lyrics about experiences of death and war, though the sheer sonic joyfulness shrouds them.
A cursory clicking through of their first album on YouTube does reveal a more freewheeling, organic jit approach. If anything, today’s album paints a picture of the difficulty in balancing a unique genre with catering to an unexpectedly wide audience. How do you take a genre that’s integral to your life and political and cultural outlooks in your native country and try to make it appealing to foreign audiences? It remains a relevant question as new African genres like amapiano reach new foreign heights. The richness of the guitar melodies helps this album hold up today, and as an artifact of the distinctively ‘80s fad of the notion of ‘world’ music, it remains both of interest and a bit sad. The Bhundu Boys broke up due to financial difficulties, and many of its members died within a decade of this album’s release. Jit gradually succumbed to the rise of new genres in Zimbabwe: the winds of musical change blow with an often-devastating intensity. However, it’s still something of a triumph that the Bhundu Boys were for a time standard-bearers who opened opportunities up for other African genres via their jumbled jit journey.