The demise of three mbira maestros, namely Ephat Mujuru, Dumisani Maraire and Chiwoniso Maraire (pictured), seems to have driven the genre into oblivion.
in the groove by Fred Zindi
Mbira is the name given to both the instrument and the music coming out of that instrument. It is mystical music which has been played for over a thousand years by the Shona people of Zimbabwe.
It is surprising to note that since the deaths of Mujuru, Maraire and his daughter, Chiwoniso, the mbira movement seems to have died a slow death.
Although Chimurenga music guru Thomas Mapfumo is classified as one of the modern times proponents of mbira music in Zimbabwe, his continued stay in exile in the United States has not helped the genre. His proposed tour of Zimbabwe’s cities and towns next month might give a boost to this dying genre.
Genres of music almost never die out altogether. There are still plenty of people interested in listening to tsava tsava, kwela and marabi even though neither of those genres is really popular anymore.
After exposure by Maraire who struggled to introduce mbira music into the Methodist church in the early 1980s we expected the genre to gradually mutate over time or to become tributaries flowing into some larger stream of practice. Also, in the early 1980’s there was a great revival of interest in Zimbabwean culture, especially mbira music, which had almost died out for a little while but then came back in force after independence.
Personally, while I absolutely love mbira music, I really wish that nyunga nyunga sound had not declined so precipitously after the death of the Maraires. It’s an amazing medium for rich, traditional music, but not a particularly economical one, and many contemporary artistes such as those hooked on Zimdancehall, sungura or pop spin-offs like hip-hop are either too glitzy or have some sort of strange, emphatically modern sound ethos attached to them.
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Maraire was born in Chakohwa near Mutare on December 27, 1944. He moved to the United States in 1967 where he started teaching music from 1968 through 1972 at the University of Washington in Seattle. He taught the mbira and marimba instruments. His children, Tendai Maraire, Dumi Maraire Junior and Chiwoniso were born in the US.
In 1968, the Ethnomusicology Division of the University of Washington hired the talented young Maraire as a isiting Artist. Dumi taught at the UW for 5 years, and continued to reside in Seattle until 1982, teaching hundreds of people to play Zimbabwean music. Dumi’s marimba ensembles became renowned throughout much of the Northwest, performing at fairs and festivals, in schools and clubs, and releasing several albums.
In 1990, Maraire earned his Doctorate from the UW School of Music and returned home to teach at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare.
Maraire is credited for his contribution to music in Seattle and North America in general.
Maraire died on November 25, 1999 in Zimbabwe after suffering a stroke.
Before his death, he had invested his cultural knowledge of mbira playing in his daughter Chiwoniso. Chiwoniso soon rose to be a mbira music icon and musician. Chiwoniso then zoomed through a selection of her hit songs Wandirasa and Iwayi Nesu (Mwari Baba) with the vigour of a woman half her age. With her mbira and smooth vocals, she not only became a local star, but also an international one.
Upcoming mbira artistes such as Hope Masike and Diana Mangwenya Samkange have not been able to reach the dizzy heights which Chiwoniso had scaled.
Chiwoniso was really an R‘n’B artiste who fused her music with mbira. It seems Zimbabweans after the death of Chiwoniso turned their back on mbira and it looks like only Europeans are still fascinated by the mbira instrument. That probably explains why Hope Masike spends a portion of her time in Europe with the music outfit they call Monoswezi (Mozambique, Norway, Sweden and Zimbabwe)
Chiwoniso was born in 1976 in Olympia, Washington, US. When the family moved back to Zimbabwe, Chiwoniso also came back with her father who taught her to play mbira. Together they did gigs in clubs and churches while she attended the Zimbabwe College of Music where she did a National Certificate in Music (NCM) programme.
She later joined The Storm, an Afro-beat band led by Andy Brown with whom she later had two children, Chengeto and Chiedza.
In 1995, she recorded an album, Ancient Voices where she mixed traditional and modern beats, sang in English and Shona, and used both contemporary instruments and traditional African instruments such as the mbira, hosho and ngoma. Her favourite mbira was the nyunga nyunga.
In September 2008, Chiwoniso released her fourth album and first international album in over ten years, Rebel Woman. The album perfectly mirrored Chiwoniso’s life in the sense that she sang about all her personal experiences and those of others. From her own spirituality to a passerby on the street, every song in Rebel Woman was influenced by a specific event in her life. In the album, Chiwoniso blended ancient, African soul with modern spirit accompanied with the melodies of the mbira and deep grooves.
In late 2008, Chiwoniso moved back to the US where promoters arranged a tour of Europe and Canada for her. She returned to Zimbabwe in 2010.
While on tour in Denmark, Chiwoniso spoke out against police brutality and violence in Zimbabwe.
She died on July 24, 2013 aged 37. Her death robbed the music fraternity of a sincere, creative, innovative, serious and dedicated singer and performer, but most of all, her death seemed to have buried the mbira genre with her. She was instrumental in bringing Zimbabwean mbira music to a higher level.
Apart from Chiwoniso and her father as the main exponents of mbira music in Zimbabwe, was also one musician who played all of Zimbabwe’s five types of mbira, including Mbira dzeVadzimu,. His name was Ephat Mujuru. He died after a stroke on disembarking from an Air Zimbabwe plane in London, on October 5, 2001.
He was ranked among several mbira players in Zimbabwe who included Mbuya Beaula Dyoko, Simon Mashoko, Stella Chiweshe, Mbira Dze Nharira, Nyamasvisva, Cosmas Magaya, Musekiwa Chingodza, Garikayi Tirikoti, and Forward Kwenda.
Mbira was forbidden in colonial times where it was considered the sound of the devil. However, Mujuru confronted the colonialists head on, and against all odds, pursued his career in mbira playing.
Mujuru was born in 1950 and was raised in a small village in the Makoni district of Rusape. He was taught to play the mbira by his grandfather, Muchatera Mujuru. Muchatera was a spirit medium and a prophet who belonged to one of the most important ancestral spirits in Shona cosmology, Chaminuka. Showing clear talent for the rigours of mbira training, Ephat advanced quickly, playing his first possession ceremony when he was just aged eight. At his Rhodesian-run Catholic school, young Mujuru’s teachers told him that to play mbira was a “sin against God”. This irritated Muchatera so much that he withdrew his grandson and sent him to school in an African township outside the capital, Salisbury (present day Harare).
Mbira music has been instrumental in sustaining the ancient musical traditions of Zimbabwe but unfortunately it is slowly disappearing as most young people turn their backs on this tradition..
Could the connection with spirit mediums and being possessed by ancestoral spirits be the reason why many young Zimbabweans resent mbira music? Or is it just because they prefer modern Western music with western instruments? I am still yet to find out, but one thing for sure is the fact that mbira is no longer being accepted the way it was during the period when Mujuru, Maraire and Chiwoniso had succeeded in bringing it into the limelight.
On a sad note, I have just received the devastating news about the death of another music icon and composer of the much covered Ruva Rangu, Brian Rusike. May his dear soul rest in eternal peace!
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