Lion Songs: Thomas Mapfumo and the music that made Zimbabwe by Banning Eyre (review)

This biography of musician Thomas Mapfumo tells the personal and public story of what is arguably Zimbabwe's most celebrated music folk hero. Originally named Michael Munhumumwe, using his maternal grandfather's surname, Thomas officially adopted his first name and his stepfather's surname when he came from the rural areas as a young boy to enrol at a city school, in then Salisbury now Harare. Thomas was to meet his biological father when he was nineteen years old, locating the farm labourer and itinerant old musician Tapfumaneyi Mupariwa at a farm in the Beatrice area close to Harare. Tapfumaneyi sired the boy with Janet Munhumumwe only to move on as he had not paid enough lobola (bride price) for the two to live together as husband and wife.

The book is useful in understanding Zimbabwe's politics during the colonial period and in the different phases of post-independence. The struggles of Africans in a racist white settler colony are insightfully chronicled. The creative compositions by Thomas Mapfumo and his band, the Black Unlimited, are a sonic prism through which hardships suffered and resilience against oppression are refracted. Songs such as 'Pfumvu paruzevha' (loosely translated as 'Struggles or Hardships in the Rural Areas') and 'Tumira Vana kuHondo' ('Send the Children to War') are poignant testimonies of the activist role of the socially and politically committed musician. But they called their Mbira-based music Chimurenga also because it was a revolutionary sound.

Mapfumo did not only inspire the ordinary suffering Zimbabwean masses; freedom fighters also recognized him as a kindred spirit. His anti-colonial stance, however, was nearly quashed when Bishop Abel Muzorewa released him from prison on the condition that Mapfumo play at a Muzorewa rally. Muzorewa had negotiated an 'internal settlement' with the Rhodesian rebel leader Ian Smith that excluded the exiled liberation movement. After independence, the musician first had a lukewarm relationship with the new ZANU PF-led government, but was soon embraced when he sang songs in praise of Mugabe. Ironically, the same songs also antagonized listeners from ZAPU and the Ndebele ethnic group. However, the honeymoon with Mugabe's government was to end when Mapfumo reverted to his acerbic social commentary and sang about corruption. Thomas's life has been intricately linked with Zimbabwe's historical narrative to the extent that his personal and public persona appears like an epic leading all the way to the contemporary crisis in Zimbabwe.

Besides providing critical insights into Zimbabwe's political dynamics, Lion Songs is rich with anthropological detail on the Shona people, and offers a convincing discussion of the intrinsic psycho-social significance of Mbira music in the spiritual life of the Shona. Banning Eyre's interaction with Zimbabweans for over two decades qualifies him to write about the Shona and Zimbabwe. Employing a strictly anthropological perspective to delve into the soul of Shona music, the book complements Paul Berliner's The Soul of Mbira, which similarly offers a textured thick description of the spiritual role of Mbira music in Zimbabwe, and which profiles key Mbira players and spirit mediums.

A significant aspect of the biography is its study and presentation of Mbira ethno-musicology and Mapfumo's composition techniques. The Mbira is used in Shona religion, and these roots give Mapfumo a mystic outlook even though he has modernized, secularized and internationalized the music. It is not only Thomas Mapfumo's lyrical content that is socially engaged, but the beat and rhythm of Mbira music or the Mbira sound transposed onto the guitar. Eyre describes Mbira music as 'a high art' that is 'rooted in polyphony and polyrhythm'. The author is not only musically literate and comprehends and demonstrates music notation, but is an accomplished musician who has also played and recorded with Mapfumo. The book underlines how different guitarists and Mbira players in Mapfumo's musical career contributed to the evolution of his distinct sound...