Introducing NEW but exciting Zimbabwe talent

The world, quite frankly, is to blame for the lack of durability in today's music. There's too much competition in this industry, as much as there's too much support for the wrong kinda music out there. I had personally moved to listening to classic music only, because I couldn't find really good music to listen to. Some genres are just pieces of rubbish, or that's at least what they ended up being handled badly by people who don't have a full understanding of the kind of music they make.

It was until this week when I never wanted to listen to most of our local artists for fear of disappointment. I'm known to be very vocal, therefore if I let myself get disappointed, I'd end up upsetting a lot of people on this newspaper, and on our forums, and killing dreams in the process.

My encounter with Kudzai Mukuku changed my perspective on local talent. He made me realise that it's not all young artists that have totally lost their touch on music. I found myself repeating three songs he sent to me on my playlist. For the whole week this week I fell in love with Paul Martin's music that I did a little follow up on him to hear who he really was, and what made his music so different from the rest of the upcoming musicians.

Born Paul Madzviti Martin, now known as Paul Martin was born on the 26th of April 1992 in Harare. He is a second born child in a family of three. He first developed his passion for singing in the school choir at Lochinvar Primary School where he attained all his primary education as also a tennis team player.

He went to Waddilove High School were he was often mocked, but at the same time appreciated for singing soprano and alto, which are usually the singing parts for girls. "My voice finally developed into a high tenor and baritone range after puberty, leaving me with a high falsetto as a remainder of my soprano "he said. Martin bragged of having always known that he was special in a way because he was often chosen for the best parts mainly solo singing parts and would win several singing competitions.

But "surprise, suprise" his most recent award was at Zimbabwe School of Mines where he won the singing competition in 2012. "I completed my National Diploma there in Mine Geology, something that is away from music."

Being raised in a Christian family, Paul says his first compositions where mainly gospel oriented, and he remembers most of them vividly. He thinks he has the most bizarre way of writing music. I would say he has a gift of dreaming up melodies which he then adds meaningful words to.

Thanks to improved technology, he can record the melodies as soon as he wakes up so he won't forget them when it's time for development. Most of the times however, he admits to listening to different instrumentals and write his own songs to them, which he claims to find the easiest.

Oh Martin, that's you, I prefer our good old dream strategy, I will invite you up for a duet soon. (winks) I could not believe it when I heard that his first studio for his own composition was only in March 2016. Thanks to a friend who linked him up with DJ Ace Tanner. Just like me, the DJ was mesmerised by Paul's and voice quickly challenged him with more instrumentals to sing to.

This experience was a trigger an unending fountain of songs coming out of the young man, as he describes it. Him and DJ Ace Taner later recorded their first single together (Made 4 love}, which also featured Naim Keriah (shamaika productions). The video to Mad 4 love is currently the number one music video on the Zambezi Magic Zim Top 10 four weeks in a row. The same video has had awesome views on his facebook page Paul Martin Music.

"My current favorite star is inspired by rnb, soft rock, dance and pop music. I also look up to a few international artists like Sia, Linkin Park, Coldplay, One Republic and Mariah Carey mainly because of their song writing skills."

He admires their worldwide success and amazing vocals. There's no way in hell he was gonna say he doesn't have local influencers. I mean, that's just impossible right? When we have urban grooves gurus, like ana Sanni Makhalima, Trevor Dongo, Alexio Kawara and Rocqui. Yeah, only to mention a few.

"In as much as most of Zimbabwean music is good, it saddens me that it rarely receives continental or international success, only the likes of Oliver Mtukudzi and a few others made it." I think it's because most of it lacks proper lyrical content that has a long lasting effect and international feel to it."