BY DR TONY M MONDA
Thomas Mapfumo began his music career as a member of the Springfields Band which toured Mozambique whilst it was still Portuguese East Africa in 1967. The band had several other incarnations, including the Cosmic Four and the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band—a moniker with rather strange evangelical and agricultural overtones. Finding the city and township
nightclub scene stifling, Mapfumo and his band moved to Mhangura, where they performed in smoky district community halls, built to entertain and provide recreation for the mine and farm workers at weekends.
By day the band worked as ‘chicken’ labourers on a poultry farm. Hence the name Hallelujah Chicken Run Band for the musical group.
In the early 1970s Mapfumo with the Halleluiah Chicken Run Band began to fuse Western Rock
with traditional Shona music and in the space of five years (19740-1979), they recorded 28 singles together, most of which became popular hits in Zimbabwe’s indigenous communities.
In 1976 at the age of 31, Mapfumo formed the ‘Acid Band’ and began to record revolutionary songs which made an invaluable contribution to the War of Liberation by politically mobilizing the people. Hits such as “Chiruzevha Chapera” – Rural Lifestyle has Ended, which described the disruption of an idyllic rural lifestyle by the Rhodesian insurgency, and “Tumiraivana kuHondo” – Send your Children to War, gained him notoriety and socio-political credence and with it attendance to his shows rose to unprecedented levels.
With the Acid Band, he blended popular and traditional Mbira music, coupled with highly emotive politically inspired lyrics engaging in politics, social injustices, poverty, which were the trend in many songs until independence in 1980.
Although covertly expressed in his music, the songs rallied people to the cause of the liberation war and instilled a sense of national pride and civic responsibility in his audience.
in Mapfumo’s wake, many talented musicians and groups emerged in the late 1970s including Tineyi Chikupo, Susan Mapfumo, Oliver Mtukudzi, the Green Arrows, and others.
The Acid Band preceded “Black Men Unlimited” during the crucial period of 1976-1977; one in which 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 he created and developed the Chimurenga sound which emulates the patterns of the traditional Shona Mbira. In essence
Mapfumo’s guitar style liberated the conventional Mbira and instrumentally hybridized and electrified the traditional sound of Zimbabwe without losing its soulful Mbira quintessence.
Earlier in the history of The Blacks Unlimited, the superbly gifted mbira-guitar maestro, Jonah
Sithole, who died in 1997, and had, first played with Mapfumo in the mid-1970s, is credited as one of the innovators of transposing Mbira music to electric guitar. Sithole played a pivotal role in establishing the signatory style of the band.
Their first album entitled Hokoyo – Beware, contained the songs that led to Mapfumo’s detention by the Rhodesian forces. To obtain his release, Mapfumo agreed to perform for the Rhodesian ruling party.
However, at the concert he sang his most revolutionary songs. He said: “since I’d been in detention, I didn’t have time to write new ones . . . “
The songs ‘Hokoyo’, and ‘Pfumvu Paruzevha’ express the plight of the Freedom Fighters whilst they were battling the Rhodesian army. The song ‘Tumira Vana Kuhondo’ was intended to mobilise the youth to join the Liberation War. Following Zimbabwe’s liberation in 1980,
Mapfumo and The Blacks Unlimited released ‘Gwindingwe rine Shumba’ (There’s a Lion in the Deep Forest), a joyous celebration of his country’s independence.
As a musician Thomas Mapfumo is an outstanding personality in the history of Zimbabwean music. He is the first Zimbabwean to have recorded “The Greatest Hits” album, and in 1987 was voted Chairman of the Zimbabwe Music Co-operative.
A self-taught guitarist, Mukanya with his Lion’s voice, is unparalleled as a musician and unequalled as a socio-cultural spokesman. Mapfumo’s eclectic and hybridized renditions of Mbira music may also underscore the long history of cultural intercourse between Zimbabwe, Africa and the Diaspora that extends through the era of our Liberation War into the present.
Through his music Thomas Mapfumo has helped to illuminate and preserve the values and ethos of the Liberation War of Independence.
Dr. Tony Monda holds a PhD. in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA in Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. E-mail: tonym.MONDA@gmail.com
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