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Spirits To Bite Our Ears: Thomas Mapfumo & the Blacks Unlimited
The Singles Collection 1977- 1986
DBK Works (US)
Cat: DBK 522

Source: African Business /January 2006

Thomas Mapfumo - the 'Lion of Zimbabwe' - has been living in Oregon, USA for just over five years. The reason he left his homeland was the increasing danger in Zimbabwe for anyone criticising President Robert Mugabe's autocratic and erratic rule.

Not that he feared for his own safety, but when a friend told him there was a plot against his family he quickly decided that exile was the only option.

From his base in Eugene in the Northwest of the US he has continued to record his music and tour the world - including a couple of courageous visits to Zimbabwe and appearing at the G8 Eden Project concert in the UK last July.

Many of his new songs continue the struggle - that is, they continue to call Zimbabwe's ruling elite to account and lend support and a voice of protest for the people.

Despite some of the hyperbole written about this fascinating artist, it can be argued that Mapfumo is, essendtially, apolitical. He has always had a fiercely independent streak, speaking his mind openly while rejecting formal political allegiances.

And yet the nascence of his extraordinary career is indelibly linked to his role in Zimbabwe's independence struggle. Indeed, he calls his music chimurenga (meaning 'struggle' in Shona), a name commonly used to describe the liberation war.

Mapfumo was born in 1945 in Marondera, a small town south-east of what is now Harare but was then known as Salisbury.

He spent his formative years like many other young boys - going to school, returning home to bring the cattle at the end of the day, singing in a small church choir on Sunday, and helping with household chores.

And there was still time to enjoy his other great passion, soccer, playing with his brothers and friends.

Updating tradition
His family were enthusiastic organisers of traditional festivals and he would sometimes stay up all night listening to Shona drums, called ngoma, hosho rattles and mbira. The metal keyed mbira instrument is pivotal to Shona culture.

Played within a deze (calabash), in the hands of a skilled player the mbira's hypnotic, rolling melodies can summon the presence of ancestor spirits.

Having left high school, the young Mapfumo became a professional singer and entertainer, covering the international hits of the day such as Elvis Presley songs.

But he never lost his early love of traditional music and soon hit upon the idea of incorporating that sound within a contemporary music idiom, and writing songs that invariably spoke of people's concerns and aspirations.

In fact, there were a number of other artists that were working along the same lines.

The most notable was the late master-guitarist and vocalist Jonah Sithole. In the early days Sithole's and Mapfumo's bands, The Storm and the Acid Band respectively, were great rivals.

But eventually they joined forces to create the Blacks Unlimited, a band that has been in existence, in one form or another, for some 30 years.

From time to time Sithole would drift off to form his own band and work on his own projects. So Mapfumo called upon other equally virtuoso guitarists - including the famed Joshua Dube, Leonard 'Pickett' Chiyangwa, and James Chimombe. But Sithole always said he enjoyed playing with him - that Mapfumo's exquisite vocals and phrasing were perfect for his own playing style.

While this album of 17 early recordings does not come with extensive line notes that might tell us which musicians are playing on which track, they nevertheless carry Mapfumo's long time friend and guitarist, Banning Eyre's, informative interpretation of what the Shona lyrics mean.

Perhaps the best known song is a classic mbira number that has been Mapfumo's repertoire for many years. Titled Pidigori, it tells of an arrogant man whose passing is mourned by no one. Once it may have alluded to Ian Smith, the notorious Rhodesian rebel prime-minister who held out for so long against the demands for liberation and majority rule. Today it could be addressed to anyone whose obstinacy causes people to suffer.

Other tracks include Pachinyakare that dates from 1981. We are told that it is one of Mapfumo's first songs to suggest that life was less than perfect in independent Zimbabwe.

Another song of the same year gives advice to a young bride. "Joyce", the falsetto voice of an
Aunt sings, "now that you are married, leave all your bad habits behind."

Perhaps the most powerful political song is Tongosienda, recorded in 1986. Here Mapfumo appeals to the peoples of neighbouring Mozambique to resist the rebel Renamo movement then backed by South African Apartheid government of President P.W. Botha. Against the hurdy-gurdy keyboard of Charles Makokova, Mapfumo almost teases the listener with his repetition of verses before the band's female backing vocalists, the Singing Daughters, swoop in with a series of souring choruses.

Spirits to Bite our Ears is as an extraordinary compilation of the early work of one of Africa's greatest voices.

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