Early Years – Conclusion

Colonialism, domestic life, and women’s roles

Sekuru Chigamba’s stories of growing up offer an exceptional record of rural life in colonial Zimbabwe. They portray the Chigamba family’s experiences in one particular region, known as Guruve, and unfold during a relatively short time period extending from the 1890s to the late 1950s, during which colonial rule was established and consolidated. In them, Sekuru Chigamba describes constant interactions between indigenous and colonial context. These interactions are particularly visible in Sekuru Chigamba’s account of his family’s continual movement between their natal village, known as Chigamba Village, and the succession of white-owned commercial farms where his father and paternal uncles worked.

Interactions between indigenous Zimbabweans and white colonists profoundly reshaped life on both sides. In Chigamba Village, the extended absences of Sekuru Chigamba’s father and uncles affected every aspect of daily life. During the drought of 1947, for example, Sekuru Chigamba describes his family’s access to food as more limited than their immediate neighbors, forcing his grandmother Manungwa to beg for scraps under the pretense of using them to feed her chickens.

Because of his parents’ frequent absences, Sekuru Chigamba spent two years living with Manungwa, who was simultaneously caring for several other grandchildren. During this time, even the family’s sleeping arrangements were directly shaped by colonialization. As Sekuru Chigamba told me, children of the opposite sex did not conventionally sleep in the same room:

Let’s say they have two boys and two girls, they can’t sleep together. The two girls sleep in their own hut, and the boys sleep in their own hut. And there are different names for those two huts. For girls it’s nhanga, and for boys it’s gota.

As his father and uncles were living on the commercial farms, they were not able to build different sleeping huts for boys and girls. Rather, all of Manungwa’s grandchildren slept with her in a single room built by one of her sons. As Sekuru Chigamba recounted:

We stayed with our grandmother, and we had one room. All her grandchildren, we were sleeping right round the hut. And I was sleeping by the door, and my grandmom was sleeping there, and the rest of them surrounding the house. Sleeping in the same house. And the other grandchildren were old enough that they were married. There’s two sisters who got married, and my niece was married also, and they all moved away. And we stayed with my grandmom for two years.

In addition to the time he spent living with Manungwa, Sekuru Chigamba also lived with his maternal grandmother Siti for several years as an adolescent. Because of the extended periods Sekuru Chigamba spent with each of his grandmothers, his stories present vivid details of women’s involvement in Zimbabwean expressive culture, emphasizing their activities as storytellers, singers, dancers, and musicians.

New perspectives on Zimbabwean music and gender

Here, I compare Sekuru Chigamba’s descriptions of men and women’s musical participation during his childhood. As I illustrate, his male relatives often participated in highly visible spheres of official ritual practice, while his female relatives were more likely to perform in domestic musical contexts. While both modes of engagement were equally influential in shaping Sekuru Chigamba’s musical interests, the more private nature of domestic musical performance has caused women’s musical lives to be overlooked, impoverishing our understanding of Zimbabwe musical practice. Yet Sekuru Chigamba’s stories encourage us to recognize women’s ongoing contributions to Zimbabwean musical life.

Men’s involvement in the public sphere

Sekuru Chigamba’s stories portray men sustaining their involvement in ritual practices of mediumship, healing, and music. Below, I discuss the experiences of his father Chigamba Tavasika, who served as an interpreter and drummer for the ancestral spirit of Dumbu; his grandfather Charama, who worked as a diviner and healer; and his grandfather’s brother Sasa, who served as a spirit medium for the ancestral spirit of Svembere.

Chigamba Tavasika – Drummer and mutapi

Sekuru Chigamba describes his father as an accomplished musician who played the mukube mouthbow and the ngoma drums, and specialized in ritual drumming styles such as mangwingwindo. At the same time, Chigamba Tavasika also served as mutapi, or interpreter, for the ancestral spirit of Dumbu. Throughout Sekuru Chigamba’s childhood, his father’s involvement as mutapi was particularly important in immersing the young Chigamba in the ritual world of the spirits, which he would remain connected to throughout his life as a practicing mbira player.

In an interview with Lucy Duran, Sekuru Chigamba described the mutapi as interpreting between the ancestral spirits and living people. As he elaborates, this role is necessary because the ancestors speak the Shona of the past, rather than the present:

They don’t speak normal Korekore, or normal Karanga, or normal Zezuru, they speak deep Zezuru and deep Kalanga, and deep Korekore. There are some words which they say which are so complicated – we can say vocabulary words they speak. So you have to be very careful, and you have to be very brilliant, and understand those words quickly. Otherwise you can’t translate for people.

At the same time, anthropologist David Lan points out that the mutapi performs additional duties that extend beyond interpreting:

The mutapi (pl. vatapi) is the manager of the shrine of the mhondoro. His main responsibility is to act as an intermediary between the mhondoro and those who wish to consult him (1985: 59).

For Lan, the authority vested in the mutapi renders this figure a messenger tasked with mediating between the living chief and his royal descendants.

As a result, the mutapi serves a political role, as well as a ritual one. Indeed, Lan considers the mutapi as akin to a village headman, or sabhuku. While the village headman’s authority is delegated by a living chief, however, the mutapi’s authority is delegated by the present chief’s ancestors. At the same time, a single individual often holds both titles. As Lan observes, “Almost invariably the mutapi is also the headman of the village in which he lives” (1985: 62). As a result, the mutapi holds a role both religious and political systems (Byers, Cunliffe, and Hudak 2001: 193).

This was indeed the case with Sekuru Chigamba’s father, who served as village headman in Chigamba Village, as well as mutapi for the senior ancestral spirit of Dumbu. In bringing the positions of mutapi and sabhuku together, his authority was thus simultaneously religious and political .

Charama – Diviner and healer

Moving back one generation, Sekuru Chigamba offers a vivid account of how his paternal grandfather Charama was arrested together with his two brothers, Sasa and Chipungu. Although Charama died before Sekuru Chigamba was born, his wife Manungwa kept his memory alive, describing him as a powerful diviner and traditional healer, or n’anga. As Sekuru Chigamba relates:

My father’s father was a healer. So people knew him for that. He could divine, and he could treat people. Here in Zimbabwe, before, the one they call the best n’anga is the one who divines with shells, or pieces of wood which they call hakata. That is the best n’anga and the best diviner. Because if they use that when you are there- let’s say you have your problems and you go there and ask for a divination. So you know what they tell you is it’s true. And that was my grandfather’s profession. He was doing that.

In addition to divining, Charama also treated people with herbs and performed specific ritual responsibilities, which included ensuring cleansing new graves of dangerous medicines prior to the ceremony of kurova guva, which transforms the spirit of a recently deceased family member into a mudzimu ancestor. As Sekuru Chigamba relates, his grandfather died as a result of fulfilling these obligations:

Well, he died because of kurova guva. Some graves, you know, people, we Africans, we use herbs, dangerous herbs to put on the grave. So we need the n’anga to go and take out the herbs. So my grandfather, he did so at his father-in-law’s. And when he climbed on the grave he said, “My back.” He had hurt his back. And from there he was sick, and then he died. My grandmom used to tell me that it took only a week, and he died.

At the same time, Charama worked in a colonial mine called Ayrshire, located south of the Chigamba’s village in Guruve. The mine was notorious for its poor working conditions and low pay. As a result, Charama’s descendants know it as Chimbadzi Mine, a name historian Ian Phimister translates as “small portions of food and money” (2015: 38).

From working in the mine, Charama was able to pay his wife’s family a brideprice of fifty cents – a large sum of money at the time. Charama’s simulataneous engagement in these very different spheres bridged the worlds of indigenous ritual and colonial labor, prefiguring his son Chigamba Tavasika’s joint position as a commercial farm worker and mutapi.

Sasa – Svembere’s medium

Charama’s arrest was provoked by the activities of his brother Sasa, who served as the medium for the spirit of a distant ancestor by the name of Svembere. In recounting this arrest, Sekuru Chigamba describes Svembere, who lived seven generations earlier, as a powerful spirit able to produce rain upon command. During his lifetime, Svembere also played the mbira dzavadzimu, which Sekuru Chigamba calls chakwi:

My great-great-grandfather was playing chakwi. His name was Svembere, he’s the one played chakwi. And he’s the one found by the British people, when they came here. They said, “This is the only mhondoro spirit can make rain in Zimbabwe.”

Tracing the mbira dzavadzimu back seven generations to Svembere, Sekuru positions this instrument as a long-standing part of Zimbabwe’s pre-colonial musical culture, as well as a deeply personal part of his family’s history.

Svembere’s memory and legacy have been kept alive by Sekuru Chigamba’s siblings, who formed a musical group in Guruve by the name of Kari Muberere, or “The little thing under the eves.” As Sekuru explains:

Our eldest sister of the village Cecilia, she was doing ngano. And my brother Richman was playing mbira. So they have a group. The group is called Kari Muberere mbira group, meaning Svembere. Kari Muberere, it’s a leopard. Because he used to, “Not anyone is allowed to go alongside the edges of the house. If you go there, you will be caught by the leopard.” And it was true. If you go around the house, then you will be caught. And sometimes when they do the bira for him, there will be an animal chased by a leopard, and killed. And women, they ululate. After that, the leopard runs away. And then people have meat to eat.

Cecilia Chigamba tells the ngano folktale “Guyu,” with musical accompaniment. From the album Mbira, Stories, & Songs in Chigamba Village, 2010. Used with permission of Erica Azim and MBIRA

Learning to recognize women’s musical practices

As Sekuru Chigamba’s stories illustrate, men’s involvement in ritual life was visible, publicly recognized, and proximate to Korekore musical practice. At the same time, women were likewise engaged in musical practice, and equally important in influencing the young Chigamba’s musical development. Like his sister Cecilia Chigamba’s rendition of the ngano folktale “Guyu,” women’s musical activities often took place in a private domestic sphere, and were linked to activities such as agricultural labor and childcare. As a result, Zimbabwean women’s music making has been sidelined in many accounts of Zimbabwean musical culture, for which public, ritual events such as the bira ceremony have constituted a focal point. Recognizing women’s participation as singers, storytellers, instrumentalists, and dancers thus has the potential to profoundly reshape understandings of music and gender in Zimbabwe.

Cenizia Mushongahande – Singing and dancing

While Sekuru Chigamba’s account of attending ceremonies in Kamuchanyu Village focus on his father’s role as a mutapi, his description of his father’s drumming is precisely the moment where his mother Cenizia Mushongahande surfaces in this narrative:

Music was in me all the time. When people played the drums and sang I had to be there. Because my father was playing drums. He was very good, and no one wanted to miss hearing him play. And I used to go with him and listen to his playing. And my mother was a very good dancer, and she had a very good voice. When she sang, well, you would nearly cry. And when she danced, oh, she was one of the best dancers! So, my father, my mother – how could I leave it? I also had to be there.

In this brief excerpt, Sekuru Chigamba positions his mother’s singing and dancing as complimentary to his father’s drumming, suggesting that both of his parents were highly valued for their musical contributions to ritual life. He likewise identifies both parents as contributing to his early interest in attending musical and ritual events.

Manungwa Chinzodzi – Ngano stories and songs

Throughout much of his childhood, Sekuru Chigamba’s mother lived in the workers’ compound on the white-owned commercial farm where his father was employed as a cook. Back in Chigamba Village, his paternal grandmother Manungwa served as a powerful, stabilizing force. Even as she cared for her grandchildren under increasingly trying circumstances, Manungwa managed to provide them with a richly immersive experience in Shona expressive culture through her skill as a storyteller, or sarungano.

Many decades after living with his grandmother, Sekuru Chigamba vividly recalled her ngano folktales, such as “The Woman Who Kept a Lizard.” Here, Manungwa recounted the story of a woman whose magical lizard enabled her to harvest large quantities of food with little effort. Through this cautionary tale, she warned her grandchildren against anti-social attitudes, and discouraged them from accumulating excessive individual wealth.

Scholars have observed that the role of sarungano is often played by grandparents, most commonly grandmothers (Fortune 1982; in Thram 2015: 203). Through her skill as a sarungano, Manungwa communicated important moral values. At the same time, the songs embedded in her narratives enabled her grandchildren to develop important musical skills.

Ngano songs are often comprised of short, call-and-response phrases that require audience participation, highlighting their dialogic nature. As in many other call-and-response song genres, a single singer introduces varied lines for the leading part, which is known as kushaura. Collectively, other participants contribute a largely unchanging response part, which is known as mabvumira or kudaira. In the case of ngano story-songs, the kushaura role is taken by the storyteller, or sarungano, while the mabvumira role is played by listeners.

As sung by Sekuru Chigamba, Manungwa’s story-song “Tukutsu Tuwaya” has distinctive elements that encourage the development of particular musical skills. First, the song features a descending melodic line that is initiated by the lead singer, and continues during the first part of the response. By splitting this descending line across the two parts, this song thus encourages participants to work together to create a single melodic line. As such, it offers an important foundation for more complex forms of Shona music making.

At the same time, this song is particularly notable for its odd metric qualities. While it features the type of triplet groupings so common across multiple Shona musical genres, this song’s cycle unfolds over the course of 27 beats.  In this case, the song can be divided into three equal phrases of 9/8. Here, the lead line takes up one phrase of 9 beats, while the response extends over the other two phrases, lasting a total of 18 beats.

Although even numbers of 9/8 phrases are found in other Shona songs such as “Chigwaya,” the division of this song’s cycle into an odd number of 9/8 phrases makes it truly unique. As such, it requires listeners to attend carefully to how the triplets are being grouped. In order to enter competently with their response lines, Manungwa’s grandchildren would have had to intuitively grasp the song’s division into three equal phrases of 9/8.

By combining elements of story and song, ngano folktales require audiences to engage with different expressive modalities. Along the way, audiences learn moral lessons, master narrative expressive forms, and build important musical skills. As an expressive domain dominated largely by grandmothers, little serious attention has been paid to the music of ngano folktales. As my analysis of “Tukutsu Tuwaya” illustrates, however, ngano folktales offer a rich field of musical practice, with songs that depart in important ways from other, more studied musical genres.

Siti and Chihwiro – From stories to instruments

In his mother’s village, Mushongahande, Sekuru Chigamba spent time with yet other grandmothers. The first was his mother’s mother, Siti, who likewise often told ngano folktales to her grandchildren. At the same time, Sekuru Chigamba’s grandmother Chihwiro was a skilled instrumentalist who played the chipendani, a mouth-resonated, single-stringed musical bow. Part of Sekuru Chigamba’s extended maternal lineage, Chihwiro was one of four women married by Mapurete, a brother of Sekuru Chigamba’s maternal grandfather Sunday Mupfudzapake. More than any other single figure in Sekuru Chigamba’s stories, his description of Chihwiro significantly challenges conventional views of women’s musical participation in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwean music scholarship has often portrayed women’s musical roles as limited to singing, dancing, playing hosho shakers, and occasionally drumming. As ethnomusciologist Claire Jones stated, “While women commonly play hosho and ngoma (drum) – at which many are quite accomplished – I have never seen or heard of Zimbabwean women playing any other indigenous Shona instruments” (2009: 130). In contrast, Sekuru Chigamba told me that his grandmother’s chipendani playing was not unusual, saying that the chipendani “was played by men and women,” and that his grandmother’s playing “was not surprising for people” (Kyker 2019). His account of Chihwiro’s chipendani playing suggests that women may constitute an important, yet largely unwritten part of the Zimbabwean musical record.

Conclusion

The stories in this section offer vivid oral testimony about the detrimental effects of colonialization as experienced by an ordinary Zimbabwean family. At the same time, the vibrant world of Zimbabwean musical practice within these stories illustrate the resiliency of indigenous lifeways even under these trying circumstances. Sekuru Chigamba’s narratives of his early years are particularly interesting in calling attention to women’s extensive participation in Zimbabwean musical life. Through close readings of the musical activities of several individual figures in these stories, I have described a private, domestic sphere of women’s musical practice that stands alongside the more visible, public ritual sphere of men’s musical practices.

At the same time, the two spheres are not entirely separate. Neither are the types of musical practices they encompass limited to musicians of a single gender. Indeed, Sekuru Chigamba’s stories are replete with examples of both male and female drummers, mbira players, and musical bow performers. In the narratives of his early years, for example, we find both men and women singing vulgar songs together at jakwara threshing parties, playing the kambuya-mbuya groundbow while herding cattle, playing the chipendani mouthbow, and attending ceremonies together at Kamuchanyu Village.