Mapfumo, Thomas

▪ 1994

      By 1993, in the increasingly popular realm of "world music," the music of the countries that constitute southern Africa had generated perhaps the most enthusiasm, and the Zimbabwean singer and composer Thomas Mapfumo had garnered more international recognition for the sounds of his country than any other musician. In Zimbabwe he was seen as both a brilliant musician and an important revolutionary figure who had rallied blacks around the independence movement through the power of his music.

      Mapfumo was born in 1945 in Marondera and later moved to Salisbury (now Harare). He began his musical career when he was 16 with a band called the Cyclones. His early career with such bands as the Springfields and the Cosmic Dots featured little more than a few cover versions of Elvis Presley and Otis Redding tunes. During the early 1970s, however, when many black Zimbabweans were beginning to resist the Rhodesian regime, Mapfumo was also effecting a revolution in popular music by writing the lyrics to his songs in Shona, the language of the majority of black Zimbabweans, and incorporating traditional melodies and rhythms into his music.

      One of the key elements of this style was the use of the mbira, an African hand piano with a gourd resonator fitted with a set of metal keys that were plucked with the thumbs. At first Mapfumo and his guitarist worked together to duplicate the sounds and rhythms of the mbira on the electric guitar. The intensely complicated rhythms played on the drums were meant to represent the stamping of dancers' feet. In 1976 he formed the Acid Band and with them produced a style that united pop and tradition; his lyrics were spiked with thinly veiled political messages. His first album, released in 1977, was entitled Hokoyo!, meaning "Watch out!" The white minority government saw Mapfumo's music as a threat and prevented it from receiving airplay on the state-controlled radio stations. His music was still heard, however, in discos and on radio broadcasts that emanated from neighbouring countries.

      In late 1977, with the escalation of guerrilla warfare, security forces finally attempted to silence Mapfumo by imprisoning him for 90 days. Upon his release, he returned to writing his Chimurenga (Shona: "struggle") songs that became identified with the fight for freedom. When Zimbabwe won independence in 1980, Mapfumo was considered to have played no small part in the achievement. During the 1980s Mapfumo added a real mbira to his band, Blacks Unlimited, and continued to nurture and promote the traditional music of Zimbabwe. Mapfumo said that he and his band had only "scratched the surface" of Zimbabwe's musical heritage. More than a decade after independence, his music still had a sociopolitical edge and enjoyed a wider audience as a result of European and American tours in the 1980s and '90s. In his 1993 album, Hondo ("War"), Mapfumo's Shona lyrics still spoke of struggle—against war, the scourge of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and the loss of traditional culture. (ELIZABETH LASKEY)

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