From the book Poor & Famous by Clive “Mono” Mukundu

In the USA, they call this system of notation the Nashville number system (NNS). It is a system that is now very popular with musicians worldwide, even with local session musicians. It is a system where chords are given numbers according to the major scale of the key the song is in. I am sure if you are a musician you probably heard musicians say something like, “the song starts on 1, then goes to 6, then it goes to 2, then 5. In the key of C, it means the chord progression is C/Am/Dm/G. This method of notation allows musicians who are familiar with basic music theory to play the same song in any key. If everybody in the band knows their chords well, a difficult song can be learned in a very short space.

If you are always playing music with very simple 1.4.5 chord progressions like Sungura music, you can get away with your ignorance of chord names, and 99 percent of songs in Sungura music are structured in those three simple chords. No matter how complicated the song sounds, it will be based on these three basic chords. It, therefore, means if you plan to simply be a Sungura player who will not play in any other band that plays other styles of music, you can survive without knowing your chord theory.

I remember one session that I attended with a very good Sungura bass player. The song that we were supposed to do had a difficult chord progression. We were given chord charts and when the song started, the great bass player kept looking at the paper without playing anything. He failed to play the song because he did not even know the names of basic chords. Imagine this is a well-paying session and you are very broke. You really, really need the money. What will happen? You will lose the gig and the money.

I also remember this very popular musician who was called to do a collaboration with another artist. He was supposed to contribute guitar and vocals. There were no problems during the vocals session but during the guitar overdubs session, he was now required to play certain chords since the rest of the instrumentation had been laid already. He was given the chord chart but failed to play because he also did not know his chord names or how to count music bars. Now, for someone with a big name in the industry, failing such basics is an embarrassment.

From the book Poor & Famous chapter 24.

Author: Clive”Mono” Mukundu, Edited by Philip Chidavaenzi & Bernadette Mari-Deve

Monolio publications, Harare, Zimbabwe 2018