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Mozambique: Alfredo ”Jah Bee’ Binda dies in Beira
9:39 CAT | 04 Aug 2021
- Social activist and founding member of the CIP, Alfredo Binda, died of Covid-19 in Beira, on Monday.
Jah Bee, the Mozambican musician who said in 2004 that “Reggae is a means to reach the spirit. Rasta is a way of being in the world”, died of complications related to Covid-19 in the city of Beira this Monday, August 2. He was 60 years old.
Born on April 29, 1961, in Angónia, in the central province of Tete, to parents from Mocuba in neighbouring Zambézia, Alfredo ‘Jah Bee’ Binda was one of the few reggae singers in Mozambique to reach the mainstream and gain notoriety.
Not unaware of the bad connotations associated with the musical genre and his hair, he once said: “Jah said ‘Don’t judge!’ So who is this one who calls others names? Rasta does not mean smoking. Rasta is above the being.”
In addition to reggae, Jah Bee, who decided on a musical career in Nampula in the 1970s together with Gimo Remane, the founder of Eyuphuru, was interested in soul and rock music, taking as references Otis Redding, Percy Sledge and The Beatles.
He played the guitar, but used to say that his main instrument was his voice.
His first band, Cripton, was created in Chimoio, Manica, with Nelson de Sousa (also the comedian known as Chaguatika N’dzeru) and Lote, one of the founders of Ghorwane.
As in B for Binda, not for bee
The name Jah Bee was given to him in Zimbabwe, where he lived between 1987 and 1989.
“When I lived there, every Rasta had a nickname. I got this one, Jah Bee,” said the singer, who wanted to be Jah B, ‘B’ being his nickname, but there was already another singer with that name. “The Bee in this case is not about bees.”
Jah Bee did not record In Zimbabwe, but played in hotels with his band, Blues Revolution. His first recording was in 1992, at the Radio Mozambique studios in Beira, and he would only release an album – a set of love and social intervention songs – after 2000.
“When the situation started to improve (political openness to multi-partyism) I returned to Beira and started working as an accountant in the ‘Company of Pipeline Mozambique Zimbabwe’. at that time I composed the song “So many people will die until they can live”, which served as a special effect in many programs linked to the process of Signing the Peace Agreement, in 1992,” Alfredo Binda told CIP in a video interview in December 2020.
In another of his songs, “For a World of Justice”, Jah Bee sings Life will be fun only when you stop thinking only about yourselves”.
Social activist
In addition to being a musician, Jah Bee was a social activist, an accountant and a lawyer. In 2004, he became one of the founders of the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), one of Mozambique’s leading human rights and governance monitoring organisations.
Jah Bee “was a financial management mentor” and helped cement the relationship with funding partners, the CIP says in a statement. He became chairman of the board of the CIP General Assembly in 2020.
For the CIP, Jah Binda’s death “is an anti-corruption fighter gone (…) his Rastafarian soul exuded fraternity and a brotherhood that did not see colour or religion”.
Source: VOA Portugues / CIP
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