FRANCIS KITIME THE MUSICIAN

 

Let me go back a little, Francis Raphael Kitime, my father, was a musician almost the whole of his life, not the professional kind like I turned out to be, but there was always music around him.  When joined the middle school in 1943, there was a school band The band was started several years earlier by Father Prina a Catholic priest and a teacher at the school. Father Prina was one of the students’ favorite teacher, he taught Chemistry, Physics, and English. He spoke very good English, his father was Italian, he must have learnt to speak English from his Canadian  mother.
The school band was big it had at a time about 40 musicians. After joining the band Francis first learned how to play the cornet, then the alto saxophone, the mandolin, later he also learned how to play the accordion, the ukulele, the banjo and the guitar. The guitar was his main instruments for most of his life.

Francis Kitime, third from left sitting, here playing the mandolin, the priest if Father Musso, next to him with glasses is Lucas Kambanyuma, who was to become my fathers best man years later.

The school band would travel to Iringa and perform at European Clubs.  The band went to perform many times for Polish war refugees whose camp was in Ifunda a few kilometers from Iringa town. This has always been quite surprising as I never heard of the camp being mentioned in history books when I was in school.
 One of the Polish refugees was a music professor,  he taught the band to perform two pieces of music, polka 1 and polka 2. My father always said his favourite was Polka 1.

The band would go to Iringa to perform on all British public holidays like the Empire day and other bank holidays.

Francis and his friend Raphael Ndaskoi learnt how to play guitar from Father Musso’s guitar, another famous priest in Tosamaganga. They would borrow the guitar  and  learn and practice. Raphael was better at the guitar but he used to play the guitar in vamping style and the priests had banned that kind of guitar playing. They later made their own guitars from planks of wood so they could play freely.

Years later when he started working in Njombe he bought himself his first guitar. He owned that guitar for many years until the sad incident in 1962 when my mother had to sell the guitar to raise money for his freedom.

Francis Kitime's first guitar

My father composed more than 300 hundred songs, most of them in Kihehe language, a few in Kiswahili, one or two in English and also one or two in Italian, which he had self-taught. In 1959, him and my mother, who was now accompanying him in his singing went to Dar es Salaam together with my sister Evelina, a new addition to our family, and recorded a number of songs. During that period my mother also recorded several folk stories. I remember the day we all sat down and listed to a program they featured.

Receipt of royalties for the radio program

I wonder if that was the day a seed grew in me that I would be heard in the radio too someday.