Southern Africa: How Zimbabwe Became the Home of African Guitar Music

Chimuerenga means 'uprising', not in a metaphorical sense either. It's a Shona word that loosely translates into "revolutionary struggle". It has been adapted into the word commonly used whenever people protest and start pushing back against the political structures keeping them oppressed. In the culture of Zimbabwe, this is a word that, sadly, is deployed a lot. So much so that it's developed a second meaning, describing the genre of music that came from Zimbabwe in the mid-1960s.

This was a time before the country was officially referred to as Zimbabwe as well. From 1923 to 1965, the country was under British occupation and referred to as Southern Rhodesia. After the British upped sticks, the name was shortened to Rhodesia at the insistence of its majority white government, which was desperately seeking to maintain control of the country in the face of a growing insurgency movement lead by Black nationalist groups.

All moments of civil unrest need a soundtrack and this conflict, known as the Rhodesian Bush War, had an absolute banger. Thomas Mapfumo was a native Zimbabwean who sought to take music traditional to Shona culture and combine it with American and British rock and roll music. His way into this was to take tunes, phrases and riffs that would normally be played on one of the national instruments of Zimbabwe, the mbira, and transcribe them to the electric guitar.

Mapfumo first hit record came at the end of the 1970s, when the conflict between the Zimbabwean People and their government was at an all time high. The record, titled Hokoyo! (Watch Out! in English) was a tense, politically charged effort that caught the attention of the government. Mapfumo was imprisoned without charge and the outrage that followed was one of the reasons that then-Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith conceded to majority rule in 1978.

Which other musicians made waves at the time?

While Mapfumo was the biggest name of the era, earning the nickname 'The Lion of Zimbabwe' with his incediary protest music, he wasn't alone. The Great Sounds, OK Success, MD Rhythm Success, the Harare Mambos, the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band and the Acid Band were all taking Mapfumo's mix of traditional sounds and modern instrumentation and making some of the most vital and joyous music of the era.

This coincided with a time in mainstream pop culture when the the patronisingly named concept of "world music" was beginning to take shape. African music was making headway in the mainstream in a way it had never done before, and there were several bands ready to take Chimurenga music, along with it's more upbeat and poppier descendant jit music, right into charts from all over the world. One band above all others seemed set to do just that.

Bhundu Boys was the name given to the young boys that aided nationalist guerilla fighters in the conflict against the government in the 1970s. One of them, Biggie Tembo, started a band when the conflict ended and decided to name said band after that title. After becoming national heroes in Zimbabwe in the early 1980s, they were spotted by a number of high-profile UK music exectutives that sought to make them a name in the UK and beyond.

Their downfall is its own story, but The Bhundu Boys were living proof of one thing above all. That African music can capture an international audience just as well as anyone else. The likes of Tinariwen, Burna Boy and Wizkid are the descendants of Mapfumo and the Bhundu Boys, and I'm sure those leading lights of the genre wouldn't have it any other way.

Read the original article on New Zimbabwe.

Southern Africa: How Zimbabwe Became the Home of African Guitar Music

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