Word: mbira
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...school, no food." And from his 1998 hit Todii, a question, originally about aids, but now so relevant to all of the country's crises, whether political, economic, natural or spiritual: "What shall we do?" In Zimbabwe, the answer has always been to make music. Traditionally, the mbira (thumb piano) was used to summon spirits for help. Music was also Zimbabwe's oral newspaper, and the sung editorials often spurred action. In the '70s, when Ian Smith's whites-only government ruled what was then Rhodesia, says Mapfumo, "music inspired youngsters to fight that oppressive regime." Zimbabwe is independent...
...heard - on tapes copied until they're frayed, on short-wave radio, in bars and beerhalls. "Ministers had better listen," says Tsodzo. "Musicians are voicing what the people are saying." Mapfumo's latest album, Toi Toi, was released three weeks ago in Zimbabwe. The sounds are familiar - melodic mbira, twangy guitars, Big Band brass. The name comes from a type of protest music, but Mapfumo's manager, Cuthbert Chiromo, says Toi Toi is "more reflective, less political." Not apolitical - this is Mapfumo, after all. The biggest buzz among the fans is about the track Timothy. The song censures a fool...
...became more interested in local music, eventually synthesizing his two interests into a new, entirely Zimbabwean sound that was called Chimurenga music after the historic name of the liberation struggle. This music uses traditional elements, but transposes them onto more Western instruments; thus the rolling 6/8 rhythms of the mbira, or thumb piano, become arpeggiated guitar patterns, and the high-pitched shakers are replaced with energetic high-hat work. Mapfumo’s band, the appropriately named Blacks Unlimited, usually numbers around 20, with guitarists, an energetic horn section, mbira players, percussionists and a barrage of backing girls deliver...
...music, on the other hand, is frankly, if often banally, evocative: of waterfalls, wheatfields, even the mysterious but benign resonance of deep space. All nature is grist for its mill. Former Bebop Jazzman Paul Winter, who is now making New Age records, lists his inspirations as he "African mbira (a hand-held instrument played with the fingers or thumbs) as well as the sounds of the humpback whale, eagle and the timber wolf." If much of the music does not actively demand attention in the way that Beethoven or even the Beatles do, it does require some imagination...
WAIT A MINIM! It is not often that Broadway is serenaded by the sounds of the mbira, timbila, kalimba and tampura drone. But they are part of this musical revue from South Africa amusing and soothing the ears of theatergoers...