Singa Jindi Majita...! Struggle and Musical Train Journey of Ray Phiri

The year was 1987 when Ray Chikapa Phiri bellowed the powerful, overloaded musical words, "Singa Jindi Majita", stunning the whole country, and perhaps, the whole world! Such exquisite musical power sent shockwaves in the song, with the same title: "Singa Jindi Majita", from the almost prophetic-apocalyptic, eight track album, "The Unfinished Story". The song itself, second on A-side after the title track, was such a powerful force lyrically, instrumentally, and vocally.

In fact, good music is all about those three components: lyrics/words with message; well organised instruments; and good voice/s. The instrumental component of the song opens with Isaac "Mca" Mtshali smashing the drums in his trademark rigor. Then follows Lloyd Lelosa and Thapelo Khomo's ivory specialties of keyboards and organs. The vocal component of the song is dominated by Ray Phiri's angry opening line, "Choking in my silent pain", accompanied by female and male choruses throughout the song.

Then, the third and final component of the song, i.e., lyrical content, that is purely political, if not directly defiant and revolutionary. In summary, the song's message is a clarion call to "majita" not to "jinda". Bra Ray later explained that he was commanding the "freedom fighters" (majita), especially the liberation movements' guerillas, not to stop (singa jindi) hitting the apartheid regime hard during the armed struggle.

As already alluded to, Ray opens the vocal part of the song with an angry deep voice: "Choking in my silent pain". That was a reflection of the angry mood in South Africa at that time (mid-1980s) in which black people, including their exiled freedom fighters, internal masses, were all choking in their "silent pain" under the apartheid, white minority rule.

In the next lines, Ray Phiri brilliantly contrasts "the choking pain" of the oppressed black masses with the opulence and enjoyment of the oppressors who live on "cloud of fantasy"; "floating in the misty white"; "dressed in golden satin"; and "posing under neon lights". Ray reckons that while he was choking underground with anger, he tried to "preach the truth through a squinted eye, running in square circles".

That was because he couldn't freely speak out the truth openly under apartheid, hence his truth-telling efforts "stumble, and die". In the next lines, Ray laments the fact that blacks and whites in this country don't see colour (their skin colours) the same way, hence even if they can "laugh, talk and play", they "never share [their] pain", and there will be "no ending to this [apartheid hatred] madness". Ray then proceeds in the next verses by turning to the children, pointing out how the apartheid horrors were negatively affecting the growing young minds. To that effect, he asks two multi-billion dollar questions: "The child wants to know why he's born with adult pain?" And, "is he to blame for our mistakes?" Those two questions about "children" remind one of Bob Marley, in which he repeated the line, "Tell the children the truth", eight times in his song, Babylon System.

Bob Marley and Peter Tosh deliberately mispronounced "Babylon System" as "Babylon Shit-stem". That Marley track came out of his 1979 album, Survival. Such significant emphasis on children testified that both Ray Phiri and Bob Marley had special concerns about how the future generations would turn out to be if they grew amidst exploitative, blood-sucking schemes like "apartheid" and "Babylon system".

While Bob Marley declared that the children should be told the truth, Ray Phiri, believed that children should be given "wings of harmony" so that they can "find the way for themselves", and that [older people must] "stop running their lives". Ray then turned back to society by encouraging it not to give up in believing, but must "retain [their] culture, even though "the road is long and thorny".

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