Brighton Zimidzi
The Ndebele digital reggae artist Ma9ine is still in celebration mode roughly 13 days after bagging the outstanding alternative music at the 2022 Roil Bulawayo Arts Awards that were held in Bulawayo.
The self- styled king of Ndebele dancehall, Ma9ine walked away with this award having previously suffered the pain of being nominated and not winning (twice).
“I felt so happy when i received my first award even though it was after several nominations. It taught me that patience pays and it showed me that people now recognize ndebele dancehall as a genre”, said the ‘Chimuti’ hit maker who was born Hansel Ndlovu.
It has been a long journey for Ma9ine who said he started off as a keyboard player in church. He then experimented with Afro and Hip-hop before settling for the digital reggae which he sings in the Nguni dialect of Ndebele.
“My experiment of using Ndebele lyrics over dancehall beats surprised me as i gained many followers afterwards, now i do see youngsters in the gully (high density areas) bumping my beats from speaker boxes. My song ‘windi womtshova’ went viral after that and i swear i will never look back, I am going ahead with Ndebele dancehall”, said the self styled president of the 900 clan
Ma9ine also revealed to Zim GBC that he plans to invade the South african market with this type of reggae music which he thinks will easily curve a niche considering the similarities between Zimbabwe’s ndebele language and South Africa’s Nguni dialects.
“I am quite unique. I do not try to copy South African artists because consumers of mzansi music prefer authentic music from there. They can never see a Zimbabwean who sings mzansi genres as an alternative to getting aunthetic South African music by South Africans. We intend to invade that market with our own original sound and we are confident that people in mzansi will fall in love with the 900 movement”, Ma9ine said in an exclusive interview with Zim GBC.
Ma9ine has one extended play dubbed the 900 EP under his belt. It features seven tracks that include the controversial Kamundevere, Rocket, Umama ka Sheron, USpara manzo, EBhabha filidzi, Lokho kuyazakala and Fri- Thursday