Chapter 16 Music, Weapon of Change, Weapon of Peace Thomas Mapfumo, Chimurenga, and the Power of Music in Exile

Introduction by Michael Frishkopf

Artists who embody local music—popular or traditional—are more deeply rooted in their homelands than nearly anyone else. Particularly when they achieve renown, they are richly connected to and sustained by the local. They are culturally connected and sustained through music; they are socially connected and sustained through fans and musical colleagues. They depend on these connections, this complexly woven web, not only for their livelihoods but for their core identities. They cannot uproot and emigrate the way engineers and doctors do, seeking greater prosperity abroad in nearly identical positions. No such alternatives exist for the localized artist. Social and cultural connections, as well as economic interests, restrain them. Abroad, they may find a diasporic audience, but it is not the same. Similar constraints apply to social activists engaged in grassroots struggles for liberation or social justice, whose lives are enmeshed with a local context, with momentous contemporary events and social movements. Dr. Thomas Mapfumo, renowned artist and activist, is thus doubly rooted in his homeland of Zimbabwe.1

Yet music also enables the spinning of new social threads, the weaving of a new socio-cultural fabric, one that can sustain the artist-activist, even far from home. This is particularly true for African music, already deeply woven into popular musics around the world, especially in the Americas. Nearly all North American, Caribbean, and Latin American popular music has roots in African music: blues, rock, jazz, R & B, soul, reggae, hip hop, and salsa. Furthermore, African music’s North American transformations returned to Africa via artists as diverse as Dizzy Gillespie, Bob Marley, Elvis Presley, and James Brown through tours, recordings, and radio in the past—and internet in the present. For African immigrants to North America, in particular, a firm musical basis for the weaving and reweaving of social fabrics—connecting to one another, to the wider host society, and to the homeland—is already in place.

I fell for Chimurenga, Dr. Mapfumo’s revolutionary Zimbabwean music, as soon as I heard it, in a graduate school course surveying popular music of Africa. Love at first listen. Like many ethnomusicologists, I had been drawn to African lamellophone traditions, with their intricate interlocking melodies, cyclic polyrhythms, and dulcet metallic tones, particularly the large mbira dzavadzimu (mbira of the ancestors) of Zimbabwe, used in Shona spirit ceremonies, accompanied by the steady swing of the hosho rattle, both instruments supporting a captivating yodelling vocal style. I eagerly read Paul Berliner’s ([1978] 2007) famous book, The Soul of Mbira, about Shona musical traditions and purchased an mbira dzavadzimu from the celebrated performer Ephat Mujuru. I was equally fascinated by the amazingly polyphonic guitar styles of urban Africa, particularly Soukous and Congolese rumba.

Mapfumo’s songs drew on both. His soft, deep voice flowed over cyclic forms, buoyed by guitar lines drawing upon the extraordinary polyphonies, polyrhythms, and inherent melodies of traditional Shona mbira music, as well as popular guitar styles of southern Africa. On some tunes, the band even incorporated the traditional instruments—mbira and hosho—or compositions, such as Nhemamusasa, adapted as “Chitima Nditakure (Train Carry Me)” (Brown 1994; Eyre 2015; Nonesuch Explorer Series 1973). And yet these were contemporary songs addressing social issues, inducing connections in this world, not in the world of spirits.

Our paths crossed again when I attended a live performance of his celebrated band, the Blacks Unlimited, at the Middle East Restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, around 1994—though, of course, I did not meet him. Many years later, when I was co-producing the Giving Voice to Hope CD (GVTH 2009; see chapter 15), I mulled over which international musician I might approach to provide an endorsement. I knew I’d never reach Western superstar philanthropists like Sting and Bono of Live Aid fame. Then I remembered Mapfumo and reached out through his agent. Thomas kindly responded with a pithy phrase highlighting the power of music for social change: “Music is the best weapon to bring change and also bring peace to the world. I and the Blacks Unlimited wish these musicians in Buduburam refugee camp all the best in their endeavours.” We proudly featured his inspiring words on the CD’s back cover.

Thomas Mapfumo, also known as Mukanya and the Lion of Zimbabwe, is a living legend: for nearly fifty years, one of that country’s most celebrated popular singers and activists, unwaveringly committed to uplifting his people. His music—sung in Shona and sometimes English, a musical blend of local Shona musical rhythms, melodies, and instruments and African and international guitar-band styles (themselves inspired in part by African American musics, infused in turn by African music)—is “the music that made Zimbabwe,” as writer Banning Eyre (2015) subtitles his authorized biography. Mapfumo’s incendiary songs inspired the fighters who ultimately overthrew the white regime of Rhodesia in 1980, and he was jailed for a time. Undeterred, he continued his musical struggle for freedom and good governance. Despite initial optimism following independence in 1980, many Zimbabweans left their country, as it fell prey to tyrannical rule and a collapsing economy. Mapfumo stayed on, dedicated to his art, his cause, and his people. Despite threats and harassment, his music continued to critique power, this time the increasingly corrupt, partisan regime led by Robert Mugabe.

Mapfumo called this music “Chimurenga” (“struggle”), referring first to the 1890s Shona uprisings, then to the 1970s liberation struggle (Eyre 2015, 5). It is a music expressing the thread of his personal lifeworld. Born and raised in rural Zimbabwe, immersed in Shona traditions, he moved to a Harare suburb, Mbare, where he attended school. Later, he travelled abroad—to southern Africa, then (through musical tours) around the world. Throughout his varied musical career, he has struggled mightily for his people, for the poor and oppressed. Rooted in the popular guitar styles of southern Africa, moulded by the traditional musical elements of the indigenous Shona, his music, fuelled at its core by compassion, helped humanize the downtrodden people of his country; give voice to their suffering; liberate them from oppressive governments, white and Black alike, locally, regionally, and globally; and galvanize solidarity.

Thomas Mapfumo is thus deeply connected to his homeland both as a locally rooted musician and as a social activist—a musical icon, a legend, an inspiration, a political force—uncompromisingly, unremittingly committed to his people. And yet, following increasing harassment from the Mugabe regime, he too finally chose exile. For the sake of his family’s well-being, he left his beloved country in 2000, settling them in the leafy, artsy college town of Eugene, Oregon, where he has remained.2 Perhaps no two places on earth could be more different.

How did he cope with this transition, far from the socio-musical connections that had supported him? Music continued to sustain him, albeit in new ways, through new connections. His musical and political stature provided recognition and official asylum. He brought family and many band members along and connected to musicians in the United States while maintaining his connections to Zimbabwe through new musical releases and media. His fame (including prior tours) allowed him to quickly establish himself in the North American scene, playing African, fusion, and world music festivals and catalyzing a new set of socio-musical connections around himself. He performed for the local Eugene community (e.g., Mapfumo 2011) while connecting to the wider North American musical scenes, which he’d long admired, through festivals and collaborations (Piotrowski 2019; Toombs 2008; Music Sumo 2002). As someone who grew up playing rock ’n’ roll covers, he was intimately familiar with American music and could adapt, blending languages and styles, while his Chimurenga style became immensely popular among non-Zimbabweans.

His music helped interconnect the Zimbabwean diaspora through performances and collaborations with artists such as dancer and choreographer Nora Chipaumire (Chipaumire, Mapfumo, and the Blacks Unlimited 2009). He also wove new connections to American artists like avant-garde trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, with whom he recorded an album in Eugene (Piotrowski 2019; Leo Smith and Mapfumo 2020; Dreams and Secrets 2001).

During Mugabe’s waning days, Mapfumo toured North America, galvanizing the diaspora with a speaking and performing tour. Encouraging political action, he undoubtedly hastened (albeit indirectly) Mugabe’s fall in 2017. Mapfumo’s power inheres not merely in his songs, whether their lyrics are overtly political or have simply accrued political meaning through the uptake of Shona traditional musical symbols (Turino 1999, 246), but also more directly in his personal charisma and social influence as a revered cultural figure, so closely intertwined with his music.

Despite all the years of listening to that music, I only had the opportunity to witness his leadership—as a revolutionary musician and champion of his people—first-hand when he visited Edmonton in 2016, one stop on that tour. At last, I had the opportunity to meet him face to face, at the Massawa Café in downtown Edmonton. A small group had gathered there, mainly Zimbabweans. We were treated to a performance by a local Zimbabwean band called Mbira Renaissance, after which Mapfumo gave a lengthy but impromptu speech in Shona. Of course, I could not understand his words, but I got his message anyway; his passion shone through his resonant vocal rumble. I knew that he was visiting not to sing but to gather support for political change in Zimbabwe. He appeared at two other events in town during that weekend trip. Two months later, he returned to Edmonton to play a sold-out concert to a largely Zimbabwean expatriate audience. Through music and speech, as a performer and political activist, Mapfumo not only called for a “new Zimbabwe”; he called it into being. Less than a year later, on November 21, 2017, Mugabe finally resigned, ending a thirty-seven-year tyrannical rule.

No musician could be more deeply wound into his country’s modern history. Mapfumo was forced to leave his beloved people of Zimbabwe because of his music. But equally, it was his music that sustained him in exile. Indeed, Mapfumo’s music is all about weaving social connections. Once asked in a TV interview about whether he sings love songs, he replied,

It is good to sing about love [. . .] but sing about the important love. [. . .] We have had enough conflict in this world. There’s no use in trying to sing about love between two people. [. . .] The love that I am talking about is the love amongst the people. [. . .] We have to love each other. [. . .] Let’s sing about the love between the people of different races [. . .] that is a very important issue. Because there is no love amongst the people. (Mega Video Zimbabwe 2020)

Through the dense weave of his music, his bands, and his audiences, criss-crossing all manner of socio-cultural boundaries, Dr. Thomas Mapfumo has indeed created “love amongst the people.”

In the following sections, we present Mapfumo in his own words in three parts:3 first, his life story as he recounted it during our 2020 conference event, “Transpositions”; next, a follow-up interview by myself; and, third, an interview conducted by his daughter Chiedza Chikawa (which she kindly translated from Shona to English). Both interviews were recorded and transcribed. I conclude with an important moment in my conversations with Chiedza and a poignant song of exile. Links to audio and video examples are provided in the references section, and my explanatory comments are in footnote annotations.

Thomas Mapfumo’s Conference Address, February 6, 2020

Hello, everybody. My name is Thomas Mapfumo. My friends call me Mukanya.4 Mukanya is my totem. I was born in the rural areas of Zimbabwe. I was a herd boy, herding cattle, goats, and donkeys. I spent seven years in the rural areas, where I grew up with my granddad and my grandma.5 Those are the people who actually looked after me when I was a boy. I learned a lot of things when I was living in the country. The music that I am playing today is the music that I learned in the country. As a herd boy, I had instruments that we used to communicate as herd boys. When we would go out there to herd cattle and goats, we used to play traditional instruments to communicate with the other herd boys.

I started going to school in 1954, in the rural area, where I did my Sub A. After seven years in the rural areas, my parents called me to come and join them in the city, where I did my Sub B.6 I was at John Brooke school for Sub B, Standard One, Standard Two, Three, Four, and Five. Then I moved on to Mbare; they used to call that place “National.” I went to Chitsere School for Standard Six.

Then I went to Zambia to join my friend Naboth, who was also a musician. I lived with my friend, and we were playing a lot of music together. I wasn’t a star at that time. After some time, I left Zambia and went back to Zimbabwe—Rhodesia at that time. I joined a band called the Springfields. The Springfields were a rock ’n’ roll outfit. They used to play music by Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard—music from all the rock ’n’ roll stars of that time. I used to sing rock ’n’ roll music too. I enjoyed Elvis Presley; he was my idol. I loved everything that he used to do on the stage. I was into rock ’n’ roll music.

As time went on, I was into a lot of different types of music. I did rumba music from the Congo by Franco.7 I thought he was a great artist, and I liked his style of rumba. He was really good.

That time was during the colonial era. We were living under bondage; our people were not free. Our people decided to fight for their freedom, and they went out to get trained. A lot of youngsters left the country to go and get friends, and they came back fighting the white regime. They were living in the bush.

That’s the time that I started thinking about my own identity. I started thinking, Where do I come from, who am I, what am I supposed to be? That alone made me change. I started thinking of my own identity, thinking of my own people. They were suffering. Well, that brought something to my mind. I had to change—I had to look for my identity. And the only thing that I had to do like a musician was to actually play the music of my own people—the music that I grew up with in the country.

When I started doing this music, that’s when the Chimurenga war broke out,8 and I decided to name my music Chimurenga music.

I recorded a lot of songs opposing the white regime, and that got me arrested by the regime. I was arrested, and I was sent to detention for three months. I was there for three months. They kept sending a plainclothes policeman to interrogate me. Sometimes, they would come with a lot of singles, and some of these singles were not even mine. They said, “You are singing about politics.” I said, “No! My music is not political. This is the music of my people, the music of my ancestors.”

So I stayed in detention for three months. After three months, they decided to let me go on condition that I had to go to Bulawayo to go and play for Bishop Muzorewa, where there was a rally.9 When I got out, I went straight home, and I contacted the other band members. They came to my place. We sat down and talked about this show for the Muzorewa rally, which was going to happen in Bulawayo. Some of my band members didn’t want to go there, but I told them, “Look, we are just musicians; we don’t have guns to defend ourselves, so we have to go to Bulawayo and play our music.”

When we went to Bulawayo, we were still playing the same songs, the revolutionary songs that I had been arrested for. People were asking questions—why we were still playing the same songs. I said I didn’t have time to compose songs for this occasion. They understood what I said to them. After that, we were the only band that was supporting the liberation struggle in the country, and when these guys in from the bush heard that Thomas Mapfumo had played at Bishop Muzorewa’s rally, they thought I had sold out. But no, I hadn’t sold out! My songs were still the same. The messages within my songs were still the same. I was still singing about the freedom of my people.

So a lot of people didn’t want to come to our shows. We sometimes had big flops. People didn’t want to come. But we never changed; we kept singing the same songs. We just wanted to show them that we were still freedom fighters. In the end, they started coming back to our shows. They realized that they had actually made a very big mistake.

When Mugabe became president, we all went wild.10 We thought, “Oh, the country was free, and our people were free now.” Everybody was rejoicing. We thought everything was going to be rosy. We had won the war, and the Black people were now in power.

Well, we were wrong, because after eight years of independence, we started noticing corruption, and that made me compose a song, “Corruption.”11 From there, some of them were asking me a lot of questions: Why am I singing about corruption? I said, “Well, the government has got a lot of corrupt people.” Some of the ministers were corrupt; the president was also very corrupt.

Yesterday, I sang against oppression by the white people, and today, the man who is in the forefront is our man, a Black man like me, and he is also corrupt. I can’t take that! I can never take that, and I won’t even look at the colour of your skin. What you do to the people, how you treat your people, how you see them—you understand? If you are a leader, you are not a leader of a certain political party. You are a leader of the people, even those who don’t like you; you are still their leader. So you must show the qualities of good leadership.

This is what is lacking in Zimbabwe today. Today, people are still crying, and it’s almost forty years. I don’t know where we are because our people are suffering. They are suffering. I was there for the last four months; after I was there, I could see a lot of youngsters. They’ve been turned into beggars, moving up and down the streets looking, begging for money, begging for food. That’s not the way our people should live. We need good leadership; we don’t need a corrupt government, people who are stealing from their own people. That’s a disgrace; it is a disgrace, and the world should be talking about this.

We always listen; we always watch the news. On CNN, they don’t talk about Zimbabwe. BBC doesn’t talk about Zimbabwe. You forget there are people there, who are supposed to be human. The world is not doing anything for the Zimbabwean people. They are suffering; the people of Zimbabwe are suffering. They need your help. They need your help. There is no democracy in Zimbabwe, no freedom of speech in Zimbabwe, no freedom of movement in Zimbabwe. If you criticize the president, you are going to be arrested in Zimbabwe.

I don’t know whether you know about that. Most of you don’t know about that because you don’t hear any news from Zimbabwe.

Michael Frishkopf’s Interview with Thomas Mapfumo, July 24, 2020

Chiedza Chikawa’s Interview with Her Father, Thomas Mapfumo

Michael Frishkopf’s Interview with Chiedza Chikawa, January 2021

After both of us had interviewed her father, I conducted a follow-up interview with Chiedza in order to learn more about her life in Zimbabwe and the United States, as well as to clarify a few points and check names.

We were just about winding up when she told me she wanted to add something very important about cultural preservation that had not arisen throughout our interviews: the role of music.

She told me that her father’s music played a very important role in maintaining Zimbabwean culture for his children. He writes his own lyrics and expresses the culture in them, she said. His music was always present in their lives. Personally, she loves his music, and her brother, sister, and mother feel the same. “Of course, we’re biased,” she said, laughing.

Mapfumo grew up in a traditional Shona family, very aware of his musical and cultural roots. His songs carry that feeling because they draw on Shona cultural traditions associated with mbira music and carried through the poetry as well. The language of his songs is not ordinary conversational Shona but rather deep Shona, like Shakespearean English. Often, she would have to ask her father what they meant.

This music, then, is what kept them all close to Zimbabwean culture, even in exile. When she got married, her father insisted that she had to perform the traditional Shona rituals. She listens to his music a lot now. Perhaps she didn’t appreciate it as much when she was younger, she says, but it was part of everyday life at home in Eugene. Now she’s living far away, in Canada. She regularly listens to a playlist of her father’s songs, bringing her closer to home. His music is not like that of other artists, she says; it’s more spiritual. It contains something that connects her.

Chiedza used to braid her own hair—a process that takes many hours—continuing late into the night. Sometimes at 3 a.m., she would still be braiding, listening to her father’s music. Her mother would awaken, join her, and sing along.

Perhaps Chimurenga music itself is a braid—weaving sounds, people, and places.

Song of Exile: “Ndangariro” (Mapfumo 2010)

I conclude with a beautiful, wistful song from Mapfumo’s 2010 album Exile, encapsulating music’s power to weave connections, especially people and places of one’s homeland, to evoke their memory for everyone living in exile:

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt thanks to Dr. Thomas Mapfumo, his daughter Chiedza Chikawa, and his biographer Banning Eyre for their generous cooperation in the preparation of this chapter.

References

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