Dudu: Diva on afro-jazz adventure

 Dudu, as she is affectionately called, will be at the Alliance Francaise tomorrow and at the Mannenberg on Saturday where she is a regular feature.
Later this month and early next month, she will be joining a fascinating regional collaboration FLAME! for performances in Maputo (Mozambique), Swaziland’s Bushfire Festival, Johannesburg’s Bassline Club and back to Harare.
The regional tour comes after her performance at the successful Harare International Festival of  the Arts under the WoCalling (Women Calling) banner, a collaboration between a Norwegian vocal group, Røyst, and seven women vocalists from Zimbabwe.
During her tour, Dudu will be part of the collaboration, FLAME! with leading women artists of the region — Mingas (Mozambique), and South Africa’s Mpumie Twala and Ndithini Mbali (saxophone). At the end of June, Dudu and Color Blu are billed for the famous Grahamstown Arts Festival in South Africa.
Dudu’s music has been described as “an afro jazz adventure” —  a fusion of various genres that include afro, contemporary, Zimbabwe traditional, township, jazz and latino — and a cultural cross-breed of Zimbabwean rhythms and melodies, spiced with sizzling vocals. Her style is influenced by great African and jazz singers. Her diverse repertoire draws from her original music with Color Blu from their CDs “Out of the Blu” (2003), “Jula” (2007), and her latest CD, “Towards Alignment” (2009).
Among many public and private performances in 2009, she featured at Johannesburg’s Arts Alive festival, Maputo’s Franco-Mozambicana, performed alongside Italian visitors Ital-Jazz and Mozambican Chico Antonio in Harare, and featured on a continental album for the Campaign-Against-Hunger Project by Action Aid International-Africa, “Hunger Free, Music for Freedom and Justice 2009”.Last month, Dudu performed with Zimbabwe’s uncles of township jazz The Cool Crooners at the delightful Harare Jazz Festival, and went on to collaborate with the visiting Italian jazz group, performing with them in Lusaka, Zambia at the Portico Italian Club, and in Ndola at The Savoy Hotel.