Zimdancehall, a popular urban music genre from Zimbabwe, which takes elements from Jamaican dancehall has been claimed by Jamaican artist Beenie Man as being a pioneer and that has not gone down well with Zimdancehall artists.
“Sim Simma” artists Beenie Man, in a interview on RJR radio while promoting his Grammy nominated album “Simma” said, “Zimdancehall, a me mek it enuh. A me mek it. A me name it too — Zimdancehall.”
“Cah mi buck up a whole heap a artiste over deh an dem nuh know weh fi do. Suh wi jus seh ‘studio!’ An wi guh a di studio an wi start mek riddim an seh ‘play dis, play dat’; play dis; guh suh. Guh roun suh. Gimme da base yah; gimme dah keyboard yah,” Beenie continued.
Daddy Slaggy, a UK-based Zimdancehall figure, standing at the forefront of the the genre is credited with coining the term, and he has been actively involved in promoting Zimbabwean dancehall since the 1990s.
Slaggy flatly refutes Beenie Man’s claims in Zimbabwe’s News Day saying,“Those are false claims, he is talking as if we didn’t know how to record or produce before he came, and he talks of going in the studio and telling them what to do when he never went into the studio with any ghetto youths.”
“Beenie Man is making those claims yet he only came to Zimbabwe in 2010, for the Castle Lager festival. I was one of the people who was promoting the event on my website www.zimdancehall.com after Mark Redguard linked me up and in return I got exclusive footages courtesy of RawtidTv who travelled with Beenie from Jamaica,” he said.
He said long before Beenie Man went to Zimbabwe he worked with artists like Red Rat, Turbulence, and Christopher Martin, who played pivotal roles in shaping the Zimdancehall landscape.
Another artists Winky D’s 2020 interview supports Slaggy’s statements tracing the genre’s origins back to 2000.
Winky D traced the genre’s roots of Zimdancehall back to 2000-2001 in 2020, highlighting artists like Yapi Banton and Mogo man who were experimenting with similar sounds in the 90s before they came up with the name.
“When we look at the Zim-dancehall where it started, I will backdate it to around 2000-2001. Before that there were people doing the likes of Yapi Banton, the likes of Mogo man; they did tracks in the 90s, but they had no name, a specific name to give it. They would just call it dancehall as it is called in Jamaica,” Winky D said in the interview.
Slaggy said, “Since in Zimbabwe the internet was still dial-up I had to work with another artist Mar Fisher who was based in Zimbabwe that time. I would send him money to go to all ghettos where he called for songs then put them on a CD in MP3 format and post them then I uploaded them that’s how we worked from 2006 -2010 until the internet situation improved,” he added.
Initially, the copycat genre which touts lyrics in Shona, the Bantu language of Zimbabwe’s people, did not get attention from radio and promoters when it started out in the late 80s and early 90s. However several artist started their independent studios and released albums post 2001 and by 2004 the genre gain momentum.
Among the notable artists in the genre are Freeman HKD, Judgement Yard, Killer T, Soul Jah Love, Winky D, Tocky Vibes, and Levels Chillspot, along with the notable presence of Nox T.
