Back to Index

Drums, lyrics and melodies: listening to the history of a nation
Alex Tawanda Magaisa
June 12, 2004

Download the full document
- Word 97  version (64KB)
- Acrobat PDF version (63KB)
If you do not have the free Acrobat reader on your computer, download it from the Adobe website by clicking here.

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."- George Santayama

Prologue
When I read Professor Ranger's thought-provoking and fascinating paper on the struggle for the past in Zimbabwe, it dawned on me that even the great minds of the discipline that I had left to pursue the labyrinth of law were clearly concerned about the way in which history has become a potent tool in present day Zimbabwean politics. It confirmed a belief that I had steadfastly held ever since I was a student of secondary school history - it is the belief that that history matters.

It provoked two key questions: Firstly, who tells the history and for what purpose? Additionally, how do we go about finding the history of the nation? Do we resort only to academic texts? Or do we look to the newspapers, journals, the archives, oral tradition or media documentaries? It became clear to me that there are inevitable contradictions in the telling and interpretation of history depending on the sources that one draws upon and the agenda that drives one to write about and comment on history. I found out too that it is necessary to liberate the mind and open up spaces for all sources to enable one to get a clear and balanced picture of how we have come to be were we are and what the future might hold in view of the present events.

I also formed the idea that it is necessary to open spaces for other voices that are not often taken into account in the dominant political history. It is this that led me to pursue an exploration of our history in presently marginalised areas such as music and fiction. Inevitably my attempted mission will suffer from the handicap that I am simply a trained lawyer, whose modest connection with academic history remains the journey I undertook up to A Level history. I hope however, that despite this handicap, the ideas I shall explore will provoke better-trained minds of history to invest some time and effort in this area.

In my discipline, there is often a tendency to play with words and create an eye-catching title to attract the attention of the reader to an article that is otherwise filled with dry and uninspiring legal analysis of laws for which criticism is often the primary mission. I have not escaped that tendency, though I doubt if the title that I have given to my paper has caught anyone's eye!

The principal aim of this paper is to briefly explore the potential of music and fiction as sources and aspects of history to which scholars might resort to listen to, interpret and construct the history of a nation. Given that musicians and writers do not always set out on a mission to compile the history of a nation, it is arguably quite difficult to decipher history from their work. Yet that does not detract from the idea that there are key potentials for history in this area. One would have to undertake a complex process of deducting and interpreting meanings and messages from various and often contradicting sources. Yet in my view, as I intend to demonstrate with a few examples, it is not an improbable task.

Introduction
This paper seeks to discuss the role of music and fiction in the history of Zimbabwe. Two broad points will be pursued. Firstly, the place of music and fiction as part of the knowledge system of a society is established. We try to explore and explain the position of music and fiction of the traditional and modern African people within the historical context. A key feature is that music and fiction, like all knowledge has from the beginning been contested territory. Secondly and following from the first point, the role of music and fiction in power relations and its reflective capacity in respect the history of a nation is also explored. We consider, more specifically, the role of protest music and oral literature in traditional Shona society, in pre-colonial, during the colonial and post-colonial eras. We conclude that although underestimated, music and fiction are interesting and valuable points of study in exploring and understanding the history of the nation. There are key lessons that one can draw which might not be obvious from the supposedly factual accounts of men and women.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP