Jay Moyo: 'I sprinkle through Zimbabwean music to create a signature sound'

Jay Moyo is a regular in the city's live jazz scene - everything from hip hop and jazz shows to Christmas concerts.

Listening to him play, you can pick up elements of sungura music - the lively Zimbabwean genre he grew up listening to with his dad - Moyo tells HERE NOW's Kaddambari Raghukumar.

"Ultimately, I just want people to be able to hear a Jabulani arrangement and say, 'Oh, that's him on guitar there'. I've carried those influences with me, and I'm fortunate enough to have worked with artists that are appreciative of that as well. I'm pretty glad to have done that here in New Zealand."

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After 15 years living in South Africa, Moyo has now been in New Zealand for almost six years.

Since then, he's arranged music for Auckland rapper Jess B and regularly plays Afrojazz gigs with Zimbabwe-born saxophonist Thabani Gapari, whom he first met at high school.

With South African-born multi-instrumentalist Warren Duncan, Moyo is trying to pioneer a new sound within Amapiano - a dance genre from South Africa that features a log drum and funky lyrics.

"As dance music, it's got that strong bass line. You can play it in the club, you can play it at a concert. You can play it at a festival, and everyone will be dancing."

Growing up in Zimbabwe, there were "two spectrums" in the music world, Moyo says - one highly influenced by American music and one that stayed true to traditional music.

He "sat on the line".

From spending five days a week in church as a child, gospel music was a big influence, Moyo says, but his church band also played rock, R&B and jazz, so he started heading backstage to size up their instruments for one he could learn to play himself.

"The influential guy at my church was a bassist, so naturally, I just gravitated towards the bass. I'd just stand in front of him. I think he noticed something in me. Come through. I can teach you the basics…I've been running with it ever since."

In 1990s Zimbabwe, R&B, hip hop, and punk rock were super popular, Moyo says.

After 1980, when Bob Marley attended Zimbabwe's independence ceremony and held a celebration concert, reggae was also "massive".

"In the '90s, the youth just captured [reggae] and they took it on, hence (the dance music genre) Zimdancehall, which has come about now.

Although pop music "kind of swayed" Moyo in the 2000s, he always kept closest to his heart the traditional music his dad played at home and on road trips when he was a kid.

This was mbira music - thumb piano - and sungura music, a popular genre which merges Congolese rumba and Tanzanian guitar.

Sungura songs are about storytelling, he says, and can be up to 15 minutes long.

"The whole concept of sungura is to tell a story while you play the guitar as well. It's very, very complex music with very, very complex rhythms.

"If the international world really understood how complex that music is, it would be respected."