Oliver Mtukudzi Covers Week #3 - "Hear Me Lord" (Bonnie Raitt)

Taking a week to feature a few cover versions of Oliver Mtukudzi's songs.

Bonnie Raitt's history with Oliver Mtukudzi goes back to 1998. She recounts some of that background on the liner notes she contributed to Mtukudzi's American debut, "Tuku Music."

"My bassist and resident musicologist, Hutch Hutchinson, played me a song by Oliver called 'What's Goin' On,'" Raitt wrote. Mtukudzi's music and his Otis Redding- meets-Toots Hibbert vocal style knocked Raitt for a loop. When she got stuck during the composition of "One Belief Away," she borrowed the bass and keyboard parts from "What's Goin' On," and the song jelled. Raitt contacted Mtukudzi, and an international collaboration was born.

Mtukudzi met Raitt at last year's WOMAD festival in Seattle, and the two of them are hoping to record a collaboration during Mtukudzi's current American tour. "I'm writing a song for her," he said, "and we're trying to find the time and place to record it."

Raitt later included Mtukudzi's song, "Hear Me Lord," on her 2002 album, Silver Lining and the pair performed the song on Austin City Limits, in 2003 (above). Check out her version of the song, here.

In Tuku's live version of the song, he opens by discussing the role of music in Zimbabwean culture and notes that "You don't get to sing a song when you have nothing to say."