Word: shona
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Hokoya (Watch Out!) got him sent to jail for three months in 1977, and Pamuromo Chete ("It's Just Talking," 1978), an upbeat reply to Smith's vow that Africans would never rule, got blacks to join the independence battle. Mapfumo's music became so identified with the chimurenga - Shona for "struggle" - that the style was itself dubbed chimurenga. Two years later, as black Zimbabwe celebrated its liberation, Tuku and his band, the Black Spirits, hit the charts with Africa, an album filled with driving dance beats and heady optimism about the future. For years, Zimbabwe did live...
...ourselves first." For him, step one is to look inward. What are Zimbabweans living and dying for? What really matters? Tuku's reputation has been built on asking and answering such questions, through parable and metaphor. Outsiders who don't have the social or political context - or fluency in Shona or Ndebele - might not understand the references in his songs. The words may even seem preachy. To Zimbabweans, though, it's the truth. Mtukudzi refuses to decrypt his lyrics. "I'm happy for people to get meaning from my songs," he says. It helps that there's usually consensus about...
...After the release last year of Vhunze Moto (Burning Ember), which shows Zimbabwe in flames on its cover, Mtukudzi was questioned by the feared Central Intelligence Organisation, the secret police. Even they couldn't get him to explain his lyrics. He said, "You speak Shona, don't you?" Mtukudzi feels his songs don't need interpretation. "Everybody knows right and wrong," he says. "Deep down, they know." The Highfields-born Mtukudzi's own morality and musicality were shaped by his Christian upbringing. Over 25 years and more than 40 albums, he has developed his own style, a fusion...
...forked tongue. First he spoke in English and struck a conciliatory tone, expressing understanding for both sides of the conflict and sympathy for two farmers shot dead in the last five days, and extolling racial reconciliation as his country's prime export. But hours later, in speech delivered in Shona, he denounced white farmers as "our enemies, not just political enemies, but definite enemies in wanting to reverse our revolution and our independence." Mugabe's remarks, which come amid rising tensions brought on by the land invasions his government initiated after losing a February referendum that would have given...