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Tendai Maraire, who won a 2010 Stranger Genius Award with his bandmate Ishmael Butler of Shabazz Palaces, is on the cover of City Arts these days, peeking out from magazine boxes on sidewalks around town.

But our own Charles Mudede, whose family comes from the same village in Zimbabwe (near Watsomba, which is what the Zimbabwean government calls a "Growth Point," and the place where Charles visited his first bar) says he doesn't recognize the man.

"Who is this rock star?" he keeps saying around the office. "Here is the guy I know..."

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  • Tendai and Charles, 1977.

That's Charles in the plaid jacket with his arm around the little star-to-be.