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$16.99 CD
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THOMAS MAPFUMO
Spirits to Bite Our Ears
(DBK)
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"Kuyaura" |
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"Tombi Wachina" |
Thomas Mapfumo, the Lion of Africa, a singer for the politically
disenfranchised and a standard bearer for those who would carry
on and reinvent the traditional musics of his people. Mapfumo
came of age as an artist during the acrimonious civil war that
would ultimately turn Rhodesia into Zimbabwe, and which pitted
its white minority rulers against its largely oppressed black
majority. Born in the countryside in the late-'40s, Mapfumo as a young man was both
keenly interested in the traditional Shona music with which he
grew up, as well as the American rock and roll and soul, and cosmopolitan
African jazz that he was able to tune into on his radio. As racial
tension continued to swell throughout the '60s, Mapfumo worked
his way through a series of different bands that would ultimately
artistically coalesce into two subsequently important groups,
Thomas Mapfumo and the Acid Band, and Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks.
Mapfumo had hit upon the idea of transposing the complex sound
patterns produced by the traditional Shona instrument mbira (a
hand held thumb piano), into pointillistic electric guitar notes
played in complex tandem by two or more players. It was a genius
idea, and when first heard you're immediately struck at how original
and completely unlike any other electric guitar playing you've
ever listened to it is, with an utterly hypnotic quality that's
propelled by an ever present shuffle beat. At this point in the
mid-'70s, the atmosphere was getting increasingly dire and any
association with traditional Shona ways immediately provoked the
hostility of Rhodesia's white rulers. Mapufumo defiantly called
his new music Chimurenga, the Shona word for struggle, and began
releasing a series of 12-inch singles that were adopted whole-heartedly
by the guerilla movement, and which frequently contained coded
messages for the fighters. Harassment was quickly forthcoming
from the authorities and Mapfumo was subsequently imprisoned and
used as a pawn in Rhodesia's machinations to retain control of
the country.
In 1980, the guerilla forces prevailed and as independence for
Zimbabwe was declared, opposition head Robert Mugabe was ushered
in as the de facto leader. Mapfumo himself was hailed as a revolutionary
hero all over the continent, perhaps second only to Bob Marley,
and he began to garner more and more international acclaim throughout
the '80s. However, the optimism after independence in his home
country was short-lived as Robert Mugabe has turned out to be
an iron-fisted dictator who has held a stranglehold around his
country's neck for the last 25 years. Naturally, none of this
has sat well with Mapfumo's fine sense of justice and he has repeatedly
called out Mugabe for his abuses in song after song, leading to
the situation we have today where Mapfumo and his family has been
forced into exile in Oregon. The only good thing about which is
that we now have more opportunities to see him in America, which
I urge you to do as he is absolutely incredible to this day.
The collection at hand spans the couple of years leading up to
independence through 1986, and there is much here that is both
optimistic and sorrowful. My sole complaint is that the liner
notes are a little skimpy on context, but there's a good primer
for Mapfumo's fascinating life story on the www.afropop.org
website.[MK]
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