Mukube

The mukube is one among dozens of musical bows dispersed throughout Southern Africa in a wide arc stretching from the equatorial region of the Congo down to South Africa. Like the chipendani and kambuya-mbuya, the chipendani is a monochord instrument, meaning that it features only a single string. While the mukube’s string is not divided by a brace, players are able to produce multiple fundamental pitches by depressing the bottom portion of the string against the bow stave with one finger, thereby shortening the string’s length and raising its pitch.

As Sekuru Chigamba relates, the mukube’s string was traditionally made from the sinew of a cow, while its stave was made from a length of river reed. On his personal instrument, Sekuru Chigamba has substituted a nylon string for cow sinew.

Even given the scant attention Zimbabwean musical bows have generally received, the mukube remains particularly obscure. In comparison with the chipendani, which constitutes the subject of substantial discussion in several books and articles, the mukube has received little serious consideration.

As with the chipendani, the mukube is held against the cheek, using the player’s mouth as a resonating chamber that both amplifies the instrument’s sound, and produces overtones that emerge distinctly above the instrument’s fundamental pitches. Unlike the chipendani, which is commonly plucked with the thumb and forefinger, the mukube is played with a plectrum made from a small, flat piece of cow horn.

Many descriptions of Zimbabwean musical bows associate these stringed instruments with cattle herding, suggesting that they were played nearly exclusively by young boys seeking to entertain themselves while out alone with their herds. Like his description of the chipendani, Sekuru Chigamba’s stories about the mukube challenge this perception. While the mukube is indeed bound up with the importance of cattle, these associations emerge primarily in the instrument’s physical construction, which uses both sinew and horn, rather than through its performance context.

Sekuru’s stories also challenge Hugh Tracey’s portrayal of musical bows as “self-delectative,” or played merely for the performer’s own enjoyment (1954). Indeed, Sekuru’s memories illustrate the mukube’s central role in moments of intimacy between the young Chigamba and his father, Chigamba Tavasika. Sekuru Chigamba recalls this intimacy as particularly notable given what he describes as his father’s naturally taciturn personality. At the same time, Shona kinship entails strict expectations regarding the deportment of children and parents, who treat each other as vanyarikani, a word signalling relationships characterized by deference (Fortune, 1974: 28). The moments Sekuru Chigamba spent listening to his father playing mukube were thus doubly exceptional, leading him to describe them as filled with excitement.

Remembering these happy occasions, Sekuru Chigamba was inspired to make his own mukube. While he only plays the instrument occasionally, it represents a powerful way to keep his father’s memory alive. As he remarked while working on this project:

This mukube is meant simply so that I can maintain my father’s instrument. I should keep one with me in my home. So, that is how I came to seek one out, and stay with it. And now, it has entered into the recording. My father has come back, he has arrived!

Sekuru Tute Chigamba plays his father’s song “Yemabhiza” on the mukube