Some folks go too far. It could be the guys who “set out a step” at their frat brother’s burial. It could be the family whose yard’s Christmas decorations look like a laser light specialist from Hollywood designed them. Or more recently, it could be those gloomily annoying people who have been inserting the ornate coffin-carrying Ghanaian pallbearer dancers on almost anything trendy. Then there is Melo’s bond-or-Rand fracas. Someone is always doing too much, ain’t they?
When The Universe was giving out singing talent, there were people at the back of the line who got smaller portions or none at all. I can’t sing at all, but I love to sing loud. I do not blame this on God or fate whatsoever, because I have caused these kinds of shortages before. When I was in school my friends and I figured out a way to actually get the disinterested lunch ladies to serve us extra helpings of food. It was a convoluted plot that involved not so intricate planning… simply getting in line twice. You keep going back until they run out of the food. It worked.
That’s exactly what happened with the doing-too-much singers. They are the reason why most of us can’t sing. Everybody likes to sing, but the doing-too-much singers are the reason my singing voice screeches like my throat needs brand-new brakes and rotors. They are the crooners who stood in line twice when God was handing out musical talent and got extra helpings. You know the singers who are always “doing too much.” It doesn’t mean they can’t sing. In fact they usually have great voices. It just means they can’t temper their talent. They are always on one hundred. They do over vocal runs while singing happy birthday. At school, they turn the national anthem into a display of verbal gymnastics. They love to warble. They are singing show-offs.
For the longest time, I have subscribed to the popular belief that Alick Macheso, the extra-basso, colossus and revered one if not the best of Zimbabwean music talent was a doer of too much. His guitar antics are unquestionable insane. He can play with every part of his body. Make no mistake; he can sing his ass off too. His voice is so raw and powerful it actually touches your soul. Catch him on a good day, and he might incorporate neck rolls, eye rolls and finger waving just like any other real singers you know when performing. He sings harder than he dances.
His doing too much credential doesn’t come from his volume alone–but his intensity. Well, to prove his rare doer-of-too flair, the Sungura maestro made a much flacked fifteen minutes appearance on Nash Paints Facebook Lockdown TV last weekend. While the overall performance could be dealt with leniency because we do not wrestle against the flesh, blood and the coronavirus only, but against principalities, against powers of the darkness and hosts of wickedness in the higher places, it was his duet of Ngaibake with an inadequately prepared dancehall chanter Freeman that gave many watchers a meh experience. Ba Shero was so aggressively loud and scatty… and he scatted, switched keys, and performed vocal triple lutzes that if put them on a graph will read like this, NgaiiiiIIIbaaAAAaakeeEEEEeeeeeeEEEEeeee!
Oh, was that annoying? Now you get the picture and feel the experience better. He did too mu-mu-Mu-mu-muUUuch as his partner in rhyme Freeman struggled with the vocals, leaving the extrabasso with the cargo of quavering alone. It was so embarrassingly bad that a teammate of mine was so close to tweeting, “Inenge Yakuda Kuzodzima” as the duo miserably failed to ignite the spark correlated with the jam.
As we leave the duo to make amends with the gods of vocals and prove to us why we should listen to them anymore after COVID-19 (if ever there is an aftermath), Macheso will for now enjoy wearing the turban of the sultan of #DoingTooMuch.
