'Dembzet' infiltrates the music fraternity

Mphidi Dembe (19), known as “Dembzet” in the music fraternity, is a rising young star who, without the presence of a father figure in his immediate life, took refuge in music. He maintains that, because their grandmother had been so overprotective of her grandchildren, he also did not really have friends, so he would play at home, drumming on empty buckets and a washing board and thus created his own music.

“I would take the broomstick and pretend it was a guitar while I imitated the sounds of a guitar myself,” he said. “That passion for music lasted for years until one day my uncle, Livhuwani Nenjelele, noticed my love for music and started teaching me how to play the guitar for real when I visited him. He’s a guitarist of note and I consider myself lucky to have learnt from him.”

The school environment was another fertile ground for the cultivation of his music. When he was in Grade 8 at Thohoyandou Technical High School, he would sing to his school friends during breaks and receive a round of applause for his performances.

“I joined a worship band later on. The band was part of the student church organisation, and I was a lead singer,” he said. “That’s where I honed my skills as a vocalist.”

Today, Dembzet is a respected drummer and keyboard player. He also plays the bass guitar, lead guitar and rhythm guitar with ease. “I mastered the skill of playing all those musical instruments as a member of the House of Worship Church under Pastor GG Masingi at Gumbani village,” he said. “I am a God-fearing youth who has found his social footing in music.”

In 2017, he started writing songs with his acoustic guitar - his favourite instrument. He would sit outside his house in Shayandima Zone 5A and sing and play, and soon his friends joined in with their own guitars as well. “Instead of frequenting taverns to drink and get into mischief, this is what we did,” he said.

One day, while they were sitting outside rehearsing, a passing girl stopped to take a video clip of their performance with her phone and posted it on social media. “I was singing a song called Murphy Girl, which is about a beautiful girl from Musina, and soon people everywhere started calling me ‘musidzana wa lunako’ (beautiful girl from Musina),” he laughed.

Because of Murphy Girl, he started getting rave reviews on online music platforms and earned himself a few interview slots on local radio stations.

“I wrote and recorded Mme mubebi, a song that touches on the importance of mothers,” he said. “I know for sure, from personal experience, how my mother loves me. She always makes sure that I don’t go to sleep on an empty stomach, no matter how hard things are. That kind of love is amazing. A mother’s love is greater than anything else in this world.”

Dembzet is currently working on a full-length album, titled Celumusa. “Celumusa deals with everything that’s happening here in our world now, and is still to happen in the future,” he said. “Next month, fellow artist Yung King Emo and I will release a single called Matungu Mahandana. It’s from our upcoming EP. We just want to give our fans a taste of great things yet to come from us.”

This young artist is available on social media platforms as Dembe Fhatuwani Nenjelele. He can be reached on Tel 064 905 8938, or emailed at [email protected] or [email protected].

Entertainment - Date: 09 August 2021

Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

Email: [email protected]