By Dr Tony Michel Monda
The question on Zimbabwean lips every December is: “Mapfumo ari kuwuya paChristmas here?” – will Mapfumo visit Zimbabwe to perform this Christmas 2025?
Even after more than 55 years in the industry, the interest in Mapfumo’s Chimurenga Music has not waned.
The importance afforded to music by Zimbabweans cannot be doubted. Music is widely believed to have considerable power over peoples’ minds.
Greek Athenian philosophers Plato and Aristotle, both believed “music offers the best schooling for the mind”, and in Plato’s words: “Just as our eyes are made for astronomy, so our ears are made for music”.
There is no doubt that Thomas Mapfumo’s music stirs the souls of Zimbabweans. An original urban musical style buoyed by Zimbabwe’s national instrument the Mbira and embellished by electric guitars, indigenous drum beats and syncopated, soaring saxophone and blasts from the trumpet, Mapfumo’s musical style is instantly infectious.
His greatest achievement is giving music a socio-cultural relevance in society, preserving our common mbira heritage and artistically improvising and creating new Zimbabwean signature sounds.
Mapfumo’s music helps to keep alive the interest in our intangible culture whilst composing music for its own sake.
As an instrumentalist, Mapfumo transforms the polyphonic ripples of mbira tunes into searing guitar works that enlivens his music.
Mapfumo’s music is not only an adjunct to ritual, such as the Shona Bira or militant dedicated to the struggle for African independence, but touches other sensitive personal struggles common to us all.
A skilful and powerful cultural diplomat, he is continuously strengthening Zimbabwe’s musical footprint in the Americas, Europe and Southern Africa.
His interest in the art of contemporary African music is not only due to his talent and remarkable ear for sound, but due to real enthusiasm and a gift for musical orature, that gives his Chimurenga Music a clear role in social criticism and the conservation of our common intangible heritage.
Mapfumo’s expressive use of music as a tool to conscientize the people during the Liberation
Struggle and his distinguishable baritone voice, singing in a traditional Shona vocal mode, gave rise to a new musical art form known as Chimurenga Revival.
For over 55 years in the music industry, his music held the pulse of indigenous Zimbabwean people, sharing their troubles and celebrating their joys in a way that united the nation.
Speaking during my first insightful interview with him in 1992 in Central Park, New York, Mapfumo said: “Music plays a central part in Shona lives and is essential to our existence . . . from the earliest of times music is not a luxury, it is not only played for pleasure, but to heal the soul. For me, life is incomplete without music”.
‘Only musicians who take pride in their work, identity and culture are able to make further developments in music”.
Known by his myriad of fans as Mukanya, his totem, Thomas Mapfumo was born in 1945,
in Marondera, in Mashonaland East, 72km Southeast of Harare, where he lived with his family. He is alternatively known as “The Lion of Zimbabwe” an epithet suggestive of the status of a Mhondoro (a territorial spiritual leader), in respect of his mass-popularity and for the socio-political influence he wields through his music.
Mapfumo’s musical career began in 1961 at the age of 16-years as a singer with the Springfields Band at Mutanga Night Club in Highfields, Harare, believed to be the first indigenous-owned nightclub.
The band was also known as the Cosmic Four and the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band after Mapfumo and his group moved to Mhangura, where they worked as chicken labourers on a poultry farm and entertained mine and farm workers at weekends.
Mapfumo, a self-taught guitarist, was one of the first Zimbabwean musicians to write his own music in the early 1970s.
During this time, with the Halleluiah Chicken Run band he began to fuse Western Rock with traditional Shona music. They recorded 28 singles together (1974 – 1979), most of which became popular hits in Zimbabwe.
In 1976 at the age of 31, Mapfumo formed the ‘Acid Band’ and began to record revolutionary songs that made an invaluable contribution to the War of Liberation by politically mobilizing the people.
He blended popular and traditional Mbira music, coupled with highly emotive politically inspired lyrics.
The songs rallied people to the cause of the Liberation War and instilled a sense of national pride and civic responsibility in his audience.
During the crucial period of 1976-77, the Acid Band became “Black Men Unlimited” and the Liberation ethos and the ancestral Shona folk-sound of the band took root.
In 1978 the band was renamed “The Blacks Unlimited’ with whom Mapfumo together with the late gifted mbira-guitarist Jonah Sithole, created and developed the Chimurenga sound that emulates the patterns of the traditional Shona Mbira.
During the late 1970’s Mapfumo broke away from the harness of standard mbira rhythmic patterns, adding rock and a sampling of Afro-pop sounds to his music, inspired by the Nigerian band Osibisa and Manu Dibango.
The horn section in the confrontational “Hokoyo” released in Rhodesia, brought reproofs from the political authorities of the time.
The sunny sound of the reggae inflected “Mozambique ne Zimbabwe’, that illustrated his regional diplomacy, was proof of his boundless musical improvisation and concern for the southern African region. In Mapfumo’s wake, many talented musicians and groups emerged including Tineyi Chikupo, Susan
Mapfumo, Oliver Mtukudzi, the Green Arrows, and others.
As a performer, Mapfumo, with his baritone vocals maintains a uniform spiritual mood; yet he enlivens and moves audiences around the globe with his simple stage craft.
Speaking with Mapfumo during a performance in 2018 he said: “There are points of contact between our Zimbabwean mbira music and western music.
“Music unifies all people; this is why we now have mbira guitar, so we might understand each other better”.
Mbira music is a repository of learning and embraces the continuing story of Zimbabwe’s socio- cultural issues, closely bound up in Mapfumo’s lyrics.
His great achievement is giving music a solid contemporary role in society whilst preserving our Zimbabwean mbira heritage.
Lately, a new quality in Mapfumo’s music is the mellow smoothness and increasingly harmonic approach to polyphony clearly heard in his remixed version of “Shabeen”.
Mbira is traditionally an instrument of public ceremonial rites and state craft. Not surprisingly, Mbira Pop Music acted as an inspiring force during the Second Chimurenga – Zimbabwe’s war for liberation (1965-1979).
Armed with the new vigorous spirit of independence, Mapfumo’s reputation catapulted and invitations to perform outside the country poured in from promoters around the world. Now with several decades in the music history, Zimbabwe awaits a new album from Mukanya in 2026!
Dr. Tony Monda holds a PhD. in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA in Post- Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a practising visual artist, musician and critic and founding president of ZAAC. Contact him on 0773 805 700 or email ontonymichelmonda93@gmail.com or tonym.MONDA@gmail.com
About Author
