Download Only: Zimbabwe's Thomas Mapfumo goes online

by Tom Chandler

In one of my random trawls through the net, I recently discovered that Thomas Mapfumo, the godfather of pop music in Zimbabwe, was forgoing actual CDs in favor of releasing his new album, Rise Up! Exclusively as an internet download. Well, I’ll be, I thought to myself and immediately went to calabash.com to check it out. I happened to know that many of Mapfumo’s discs were already available as downloadable “albums”, simultaneously with their existence in the normal record stores of the world, but this was obviously a new step for him.

I hope it works out, I really do. I’m an old-time Mapfumo fan, and I admire his continuing persistence in the face of adversity and his ability to put out good music still, after all these years. But this raises a few questions, points of interest that I’m curious about.

Number one: can we infer that the internet is where most of Mapfumo’s sales are coming from? In this climate of poor sales of international music and American xenophobia, do his records just not sell in stores? I’m sure Walmart in Topeka doesn’t stock his stuff, but what about stores in civilized places like New York or SF or Chicago? Or Paris? Or his home country in Harare? (Does anyone have disposable or any other kind of income in Harare these days?) What about selling CDs at shows? For many musicians, selling at the show is probably the number one place to “move units”. Do you just tell people to go download it? Don’t you just want to take their money right then?

In this scenario, and truly just in general, it’s the exclusivity that makes me scratch my head. Sure, sell your thing on I-tunes or Calabash or whatever, but why not have it available in all reasonably sellable forms that you can?

Number two: is it Mapfumo’s idea or does it come from the influence of money? In other terms, did Mapfumo first think to himself “the internet is the future. CDs are a thing of the past. I want to be the first major African artist to do this. I’m the cutting edge,” or did Calabash come to him and say “we want an exlusive Mapfumo album, here’s a bag of money (or a good deal on a contract)” and Mapfumo then says “why not?”

Not that any of it really matters, unless you’re a weirdo purist and want to own the Thing (a CD with the art screen printed and a glossy, professionally made booklet etc) as well as the music. I think it’s just that I think it would be cool to have the impetus come from the band. This instance isn’t maybe as cool as Radiohead, a mega-successful band, thumbing their nose at the record industry and self releasing their stuff via a web site, because Mapfumo severed ties with the major labels long ago. But I prefer to think of him as someone who wants to push forward rather than aa mere pawn in Calabash’s attempt to score an exlusive from a big name for their own cachet.

I acknowledge that the reality may be somewhere in between, maybe Calabash approached him and he liked the idea and everybody’s happy.

The album is available as separate songs for .99 cents each, which seems to be the going rate, or you can buy the whole thing for 16 times .99 cents. Why not give us a deal when we buy the whole album? And for that matter, why negate the idea of a whole album of songs? Sure, if you’re 311, maybe nobody needs a whole album, but if you’re Mapfumo, what’s wrong with having the whole album experience, sequenced as an album the way the artist wanted it? If that’s the deal, then let’s go back to the old days and release a few new songs every couple of months, singles-style.