Life profiles were still being made of the late Kassim Mapili, dying at the age of 79 in a rather lonely atmosphere in a rented room in the suburbs of the city of Dar es Salaam, but ever mindful of an active life and only sporadically hospitalised in recent years.
That situation mingles wholesomeness of life that is at times lived alone, or in relative isolation from other people, while not precluding socialisation. There are of course auxiliary issues of family affinities and localisation of dear ones at that point which were a bit missing.
The late Mapili's long music itinerary makes this aspect of life the most vital though he may to an extent have considered it secondary to his career as a public officer, that is, a policeman.
He was a policeman with a keen liking to music, and his work as a public officer was tied up with efforts of various such organizations to come up with music groups, partly to boost their image before the public.
It was in the late 1960s and 1970s when parastatals had cash to spare or use in cultural activities, often tied up with praising the party.
Mapili thus went through numerous bands in different capacities, either as a recruited member in earlier days, in the early 1960s in particular, where his native Lindi region was festering with music groups.
This element is of some interest to understand Mapili's environment and possibly himself as it has a kind of Congolese element to it, as a rather depressed area economically, but with a vibrant, throbbing music life.
The Congo failed to put up nationwide, credible political organisations, but has always excelled in Africa's music life.
This is another sphere in the late Mapili's life which showed up sporadically to say the least, of his attraction to Congolese music and playing second fiddle to it all the time.
While Tanzania's closest emulation of great Luambo Luanzo Makiadi was definitely Mbaraka Mwinshehe, the late musician wasn't that far from the scene. One could pick other Congolese figures he may have looked close to them psychologically; he aped them in his physique.
One photograph of the late Mapili as a grand old man with plenty of grey hair and a hat to diminish the potential impact of that elderly outlook showed him in a well tailored suit, complete with necktie and at work on his guitar. That would marginally sound odd in Tanzania but shows the late Mapili's strength of character.
In an environment where many elderly people prefer to look youthful by darkening their hair, he would have none of it, but aware it might be a distressing aspect in performance, he put up costume to cut its visibility.
Still this manner of dress did not just come out of diminishing his gray hair but had to do with being part of the psychological sphere of Congolese music, their particular penchant for glamourous dress, later picked up by preachers running individual churches.
A section of elderly people took to other styles also brought up by musicians, for instance the total shaving of the head that comes from renowned US black musician and Satanist Tupac Shakur. It is hard to say which of the two was more influential, bad heads or diehard Satanism.
For someone who was elected the founder president of the Tanzania Dance Music Association (its Swahili acronym is CHAMUDATA), one would wish to know his relations with Congolese musicians in the country.
He worked with some of them like Hamza Kalala also known as 'commando,' and in that style perhaps influenced a powerful political figure across the channel to adopt that name.
The problem is that there was a lot of 'politics' in legalizing the presence of Congolese musicians, and evidently the problem was money.
While residents in the Sinza suburb of Dar es Salaam, a rather new place in the 1980s was so used to the late Remmy Ongala to have a neighbourhood named after him, as their reference point 'Kwa Remi,' politicians took two decades or so to give him a citizenship card.
It was the Congolese who, along with Mbaraka Mwinshehe, sang praises of the country and its leaders, but local musicians scarcely ever returned the compliment.
Save during the early years of independence, we hardly have a song praising Kenyatta, Obote or other as we saw enemies all over the place. The Congolese saw neighbours.
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