MALAIKA (Angel) (Ongoing research –
preliminary notes, presented to Mama Africa Miriam Makeba, January 14 2008, at
the Uppsala Congress and Concert Hall, Sweden.
Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi (PhD ( Professor
in Swahili and Bantu Studies.
Dept. of Linguistics and Philology,
Uppsala University, Sweden
(CRF: I spent quite a bit of time with Fadhili Williams in Nairobi, even sat in some of the recording sessions at Charles Hayes studios in Nairobi. Also played regular snooker with him at Queens' (Brunners). We talked quite a bit of Kenyan music and musicians but never discussed Malaika with him. It was taken for granted that he wrote and recorded the song. This study put some serious doubt on that score, even though there really no hard proof except somewhat weight circumstantial evidence. For some mystery remains. For others it is dead and buried with Adam Salim)
(CRF: I spent quite a bit of time with Fadhili Williams in Nairobi, even sat in some of the recording sessions at Charles Hayes studios in Nairobi. Also played regular snooker with him at Queens' (Brunners). We talked quite a bit of Kenyan music and musicians but never discussed Malaika with him. It was taken for granted that he wrote and recorded the song. This study put some serious doubt on that score, even though there really no hard proof except somewhat weight circumstantial evidence. For some mystery remains. For others it is dead and buried with Adam Salim)
Malaika has been the No. 1 Kiswahili/Swahili
song since Fadhili Williams of Kenya recorded it in 1959. It has since been
recorded more than dozen including by such mega-stars Miriam Makeba with Harry
Belafonte, Angelique Kidjo (several Indian chanteuses) and even the Swedish
pop-rock group Hep Stars in 1967 who made it their top hit the following year.
(In Kidjo’s version there are some errors in the text.)
Until recently it was generally taken for
granted that Fadhili Williams was also the author of the song. However, in June
1986, Sunday News of Tanzania presented a sensational story in a rather
long article to shed light on the history of this famous song. Fadhili Williams
had always claimed authorship of the song which he had recorded several times
and earned royalties from record sales. Another Kenyan artist, Grant Charo, had
also claimed copyright to the lyrics of Malaika, and after his death, his widow pursued the
case in court without success.
In May 1986, after a concert given by
Fadhili Williams at the Kilimanjaro Hotel in Dar es Salaam, the Sunday News
started an investigation on the origins of the song Malaika to which the
Tanzanian public responded well. Hundreds of older Tanzanians almost unanimously
claimed that it was a certain Adam Salim who had written the song. Some of them
also believed that Adam Salim was no longer alive while a few others were they
could lead the Sunday News to a little house in Moshi at the foot of
Mount Kilimanjaro.
There lived the 70-year-old Adam Salim, a
small skinny man weathered by hardships of life in poverty, in the loyal
company of his equally ancient-looking second wife. Of course, it was he, Adam
bin Salim, who had written the song at the beginning of 1945, he said, for his
beloved Halima binti Ramadhani Maruwa of Arusha (born 1926). Both families were
against their union which led to the birth of the most famous lamentation in
eastern Africa. Adam recorded the song for the Columbia East African Music Company
sometime around 1950, and he was paid 60 shillings for it. But he had no
written contract as evidence. Such things did not exist at the time.
Adam was born in Nairobi in 1916. He was a
car mechanic and he had his own jazz band called Adam& Trio which performed
some evenings per week. His somewhat practising Muslim parents did not approve
of him being a modern musician performing in bars and clubs, and this was also
the main reason why Halima’s father Ramadhani Maruwa disqualified Adam Salim as
his future son-in-law. Halima was persuaded by her parents to marry a wealthy
Swahili gentleman of Indian descent in late 1944. A few months late Adam wrote Malaika
to an improved variant of a traditional Swahili melody from Tanga, Tanzania.
A couple of years later Adam was involved in
a serious car accident and had to be hospitalised in Nairobi for three years.
After his recovery, he moved to Moshi where his parent at settled. He then
moved to Morogoro and worked as a bicycle repairer at the Kilombero Sugar
Company for 25 years. After his retirement, he returned to his parents home in
Moshi with his second wife, children and grandchildren.
Halima later separated from her rich husband
and re-married. She assured the Sunday News that Adam Salim had composed
Malaika for her, but she could not produce any documentary evidence.
Adam could produce his ‘Angel’ for whom he
had written the song which the ‘Angel’ could at least orally maintain, and this
has been corroborated for the Tanzanian media in writing by several hundred
East Africans.
Several year earlier in 1967, my late uncle
Ustaad (Maestro) Mitu alias Ayoub Ahmad Ayoub bin Amir Osman Rangooni, poet,
musician, and singer from Mkunazini, Zanzibar, had informed me at his home in
Kipawa, near Dar es Salaam Airport, that he was acquainted with both Adam Salim
and Fadhili Williams. According to Ustaad Mitu, there an old very short Swahili song of only one stanza which some
sailors on the Cable and Wireless ship (that laid the telegraph and telephone
lines in the Indian Ocean between Zanzibar and Bombay) used to sing a
traditional melody from Tanga which Adam Salim developed further and composed a
longer song. In that original sailors’ song, Malaika was the proper name
of the sweetheart involved.
Malaika, nakupenda Malaika!
Nami nifanyeje, mpenzi mwenzio
Nashindwa no pesa sina wee, ninegohuoa
Malaika
Literal translation of the above “old” or
original sailors’ version:
1.
Angel, I love you angel!
And what shall I do,
your lover?
I am defeated, I
have no money (or else) I would marry you angel.
‘Malaika’ as recorded by Fadhili Williams
and others
According to Ustaad Mitu, Adam Salim’s
original song has only two stanza, the first and the third one; the
second/middle was added later by Adam Salim and he sang it in the following
orderof stanzas: 1 – 2 –1 – 3 – 1
1.
Malaika, nakupenda malaika! -2
Nami nifanyeje,
kijana mwenzio?
Pesa zasumbua roho
yangu -2
Nashindwa no mali
sina wee, ninegekuoa malaika! -2
2.
Pesa za sumbua roho yangu! -2
Ningekuoa mwenyewe;
ningekuoa dada!
Nashindwa na mali
sina wee, ningekuoa malaika!-2
3. Kidege, nakuwaza
kidege! -2
Nami nifanyeje,
kijana mwenzio?
Nashindwa na mali
sina wee, ningekuoa malaika
English:
Angel, I love you
angel,
And what shall I do,
your young friend?
I can’t afford the
dowry, I have no money (or else) I would marry you angel!
Money tortures my
soul!
I would have married
you myself, I would have married you my dear!
I can’t afford the
dowry, I have no money, (or else) I would marry you angel!
Little bird (Darling), I dream of you little bird
And what shall I do, your young friend?
I can't afford the dowry, I have no money, (or else) I would marry you my angel!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiSO-pHn9rw&list=RDjiSO-pHn9rw&start_radio=1
Fadhili Williams version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vQgB6wLksY Miriam Makeba version
Fadhili Williams version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vQgB6wLksY Miriam Makeba version
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