Artistes Take Mbira Music to Another Level
The two-day Mbira Music Festival held at the Coronation Park in Harare at the weekend pointed the way mbira music is heading.
The festival, hosted by Red Rose Entertainment, saw more than 70 groups performing and raised the question of whether mbira music should be diluted, rebranded or preserved. While there were a few old mbira guards, the majority of the groups that played had keyboards and electric drums as part of their repertoire, unlike groups like Mawungira Enharira and Mbira Dzenharira who are still stuck with mitumba (homemade drums).
Even their vocal lines and the songs are different from the usual Nhemamusasa and others. Now there is mbira hip-hop, mbira gospel and some other obscure mbira beats. Albert Chimedza, who runs The Mbira Club that promotes and manages mbira groups at the newly established Sophiatown, says he was positive with where mbira was going because it’s like ‘bread where we have rolls, buns and pies but all under bread’.
“I feel we are maturing. Mbira has now gone past where people say it should be like this or that. Players are now masters of their instruments. Now we can commercialise mbira,” he says.
Chimedza, who also makes mbira, says the old mbira guard “freezes” whenever a change is suggested. “They do not understand that it’s only a different way of doing things. The old guard just freezes because they view change as alien. Even when they see me putting my mbira on a stand they seem lost. They would rather have it on the floor,” he says. Benita Taruvinga, a female mbira player who attended the festival but did not perform, says there is nothing wrong in changing the mbira sound but people should not forget the essence of the mbira as music and an instrument.
“There is nothing wrong in using guitars and electric drums alongside mbira as long as those instruments produce a mbira sound. What is wrong is to use a mbira instrument to produce a guitar sound,” she explained. Taruvinga singled out Chiwoniso Maraire as an exemption because she plays nyunganyunga whose keys were made to produce three or four songs at most. “Chiwoniso plays a small mbira that plays three other songs Chemutengure and Nhemamusasa. In which case she needs guitars to produce a good sound.”
While Taruvinga admits that mbira music was like bread, she pointed out that accepting change in mbira music basing it on what she saw at the festival was like accepting today’s bread whose quality is poor.
Tendai Gahamadze who leads Mbira Dzenharira, that was part of the festival, believes that it’s too early to blend mbira with other instruments and points out that most of groups that are blending mbira with keyboards, guitars and electric guitars are copying Thomas Mapfumo.
“It’s possible for the groups that are blending mbira to get an audience but what is crucial now is create a firm ground for the music before giving it a new fusion. Otherwise I do not see any future in blending mbira with any other instruments,” he says. Gahamadze cites the example of Murehwa-based Zata Zemba whose debut album Musha Matare did quite well but when they brought in guitars for their second album, it flopped.
There has been other players among them Taruwona Mushore who sings mbira blues; the late Master Chivero who gave the mbira rhythm a faster pace which were accompanied by humorous lyrics and Jenkins Mandaza who brought in other new dimension to mbira.
Mushore, who sings in English, uses mbira to tell stories while Chivero and Mandaza were master songwriters and great mbira players who used pickers to create a better sound. While hard-core traditionalists accepted Mandaza and Chivero, Mushore was not. When her debut song I Met Dambudziko which was about streetkids peaked at the top on the local radio charts in 1992, Mushore said:
“I did not have any slightest idea what people wanted but because I was tired of singing other people’s songs I wanted to sing my own songs, which identifies with me. I didn’t even know that this is what the market wanted at that time, and that the whole thing was a great idea!”
Maybe this change is also a great idea for both mbira music and the youths.
[Via The Herald]
