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Rest
in peace Chiwoniso Maraire
Doreen
Gaura, Chimurenga Chronic
July 29, 2013
http://www.chimurengachronic.co.za/dear-chiwoniso/
Dear Chiwoniso,
You may not know me,
but I have known you for about 20 years now. The first time I met
you was back in 1992 or was it 1993, I can’t really remember,
you and your friends/ band mates, A Peace of Ebony, came to visit
us. We were all sitting in the kitchen of my grandparents’
old house in Mutare, Zimbabwe and you guys came in through the speakers
of my older sister’s old radio cassette player and introduced
yourselves to us through your song ‘From the Native Tongue’.
My “twin sister” Judy and I were so excited to meet
you, we were laughing, dancing and snapping our little fingers along
to your song and that first encounter is one I have taken along
with me throughout the journey that is my life. As your then classmate
at Mutare Girls High School, I remember my older sister was very
excited to make the introduction and I am forever grateful to her
for it, even if the introduction was just to your cassette and not
to you in the flesh.
I am grateful because
it was then that, without even realising it at the time a 7/8 year
old me fell ridiculously in love with the fiercely inspirational
and gifted woman that you were without even really understanding
what your music meant, what it stood for, what it represented or
that as time went on you would proceed to be one of Zimbabwe’s
best known female musicians and cultural icons. I had no idea back
then that you would go on to establish a name for yourself in your
20+ year career as queen of the mbira both as a solo artist and
as a member of bands like A Peace of Ebony, Andy Brown & the
Storm, Women’s Voice and Ancient Voices. In your short but
very full life, you received various accolades for your talents
both locally and internationally and collaborated with other artists
from around the globe which include Ambuya Stella Chiweshe, Tumi
& the Volume, Busi Ncube, Baaba Maal, Sinead O’Connor
and Mari Boine. As one who eagerly followed your progress I was
filled with nothing but admiration and pride every step of the way.
I was out with
friends when I got the news of your passing two nights ago and I
shocked both myself and my friends with the amount of grief that
overwhelmed me. I was embarrassed and confused by my little episode
and I still am in a lot of ways. I make no pretences here of having
had any sort of reciprocal relationship with you outside of the
one way one which really boiled down to me being insanely and unabashedly
in love with the person I saw in you and your music and the Spirit
within you. I never got to know you personally and unfortunately
have only ever spoken to you once, about 8 years ago, when I found
myself dining one table away from yours at the Italian Bakery in
Avondale, Harare. I came up to you, made an idiot groupie of myself
and asked for a photograph with you, to which you happily obliged.
I have never even attended any of your shows (and please believe
me, it wasn’t to a lack of trying) and I have only ever seen
you perform live once at this past HIFA edition where you cameod
in the Noisettes’ performance. So why was I, and still am,
taking this so hard? Me, of all people? The same person who has
in the past judged others very harshly for making a big deal about
celebrity deaths. Heck! I have even written a whole blog post that
generously served up my judgement when Whitney Houston died for
crying out loud!
Upon deeper
introspection a lot of possible explanations come to mind which
include my own mother’s death at thirty six (just one year
younger than you were Chiwoniso when you left us) 10 years ago exactly
on the 17th of July, as well as me empathetically grieving for a
newly made friend (along with her siblings) who not only had a mentor
but a mother in you. Grieving for them and all the other people
I know mostly young Zimbabwean artists, who did in fact have real
and mutually beneficial relationships with you, those who called
you sister. Grieving for my nation, for even though some may not
realise i, but we have suffered a great loss. We have lost a musical
and cultural icon, pioneer, teacher, warrior and leader.
It is from the last reason
that I find the courage to write you this letter because I think
you and the world must know about the impact you had on so many
young Zimbabweans’ lives, even if it is only from my humble
and very personal perspective. I cannot go to give a historical
account of your life or career as I do not know anything more than
what is already available on dozens of websites on the Internet
but I will share the story of your life within my own and possibly
the lives of other fans out there.
Although I am not a musician
(Lord knows how I wish I were), you and your music inspired me to
be myself and be unapologetic for it inspite of any resistance or
judgement that may come my way. What I admire the most about you
is that despite having partly grown up in the U.S. you were still
very in touch with your roots and identity as a Manica woman, probably
more so than a lot of young Zimbabwean women of both our generations
are. Indeed you came from a very musical family but to assume that
to be the only source of your great talent would be a great dishonour
to your memory. I believe that your courage and passion that resonate
through your music played a big role in gaining your status as a
gender bending female mbira player and cultural ambassador despite
the fact that traditionally women weren’t known to play the
mbira. Your music speaks a lot to identity. The identity of tribes
and cultures, of a nation, of the feminine and of the individual
and it was through this that you inspired my love for culture, love
for the Spirit of the mbira and my reverence for ancestry.
When I saw you on stage
with the Noisettes, Hope Masike and Tariro Ruzvidzo or when I watched
your music videos on youtube, I saw Spirit in you. The Spirit that
chose you and gave you its gift of music. Gift of the mbira. Having
learnt almost a year ago that I have a calling to become a sangoma,
I have struggled to accept this new reality and I have battled with
it. I have cried and I have pleaded with my ancestors to choose
someone else because I did not want it. I have been terrified by
the idea of never moving back home because I would be too afraid
to live in Zimbabwe amongst the people I have known and grown up
with and shared a life with now that I have this “thing”
that only served to make me even more weird, more random, more of
a misfit and now added to the mix, “untouchable” but
then I saw the Spirit in you Chiwoniso and it was nothing short
of inspirational and almost comforting.
I am sure you knew this
all too well, that ours is a country of mostly (Christian) conservative
people that don’t like anything too “unusual”
or too eccentric (never mind that in Zimbabwe something as simple
as dreadlocks is enough to have you qualified as eccentric and/or
troubled). So it is no real shock that I have heard people describe
you as “very talented but a bit too radical” or say
“she has lost the plot” in reference to you. Some even
had the gall to say that you are “too crazy” and attributed
your extraordinariness to “smoking too much weed” as
though they knew you like that. It is no real shock but it is infuriating
all the same. Like I said, I never knew you personally but I saw
what a lot of these people did not see and that was your gift, your
calling. Callings come in various forms and it is not everyone who
has a calling who is meant to be a healer. Some become artists,
social instructors, messengers as it were, through their art and
you were one such person. You embodied ancestors from your family
line that had chosen you. The Spirit of the Mbira, the ancestors,
chose you to be an instructor just as my Spirit has chosen me to
be a diviner. Staying true to the meaning of your name, you brought
enlightenment to all those who took in your music. The Ancient Voices
really and truly did speak through you and will continue to do so
through the legacy you have left behind as a gift to us.
I do not know if this
is something you knew about yourself or even acknowledged but if
I am to hazard a guess based on the subject matter of your music
and the person I saw in you, I would say you did and not only that
but you embraced it and lived it and because of this, you inspired
me to embrace and live my own calling too. Although, we are probably
nothing alike, you certainly, directly and indirectly, declared
to the world through your stage presence and the conviction in your
voice and your relationship with the mbira that it was ok to be
nobody else but yourself, Chiwoniso Maraire, making it possible
for me (and hopefully a lot of other young brown women and girls)
to declare the same of myself.
Your strength and integrity
resonated in your music and your relationships with both those you
knew and those you didn’t, family/friends and fans alike.
You unwittingly helped shape my personal and communal identity as
a young Zimbabwean brown woman. Although I only ever became conscious
of the impact your music and your person had on me in my late teens,
your work on me started over two decades ago. On one random week
night when you and your friends came to visit with us in my grandparents’
kitchen in Mutare. So to you I say “Mai, fambai zvakanaka.
Basa masiya mapedza. Thobela!” (Go well mother. Your work
here is done. Rejoice!)
Peace, love and light,
Doreen
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