National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

When British colonial adventurer Cecil Rhodes marched into the fertile, mineral rich plains and hills of today's Zimbabwe late in the 19th century, he found pastoral, mostly peaceful peoples living in city-states of various sizes. These communities, collectively known as the Shona people, had seen little of Europeans up to that point, and fell prey to Rhodes's trickery offering little resistance at first. Under the pretext of a search for minerals, Rhodes's followers simply moved in and began appropriating choice parcels of Shona land. In the south, Rhodes faced a fight with the Ndebele, who had come into the region only decades earlier after splitting off from the war-like Zulu nation. But by the turn of the century, Rhodes had defeated those he couldn't con or cajole and was busy setting up a vast territory based on farming, mining and white rule.

The Rhodesian vision of an English society on the African plains ultimately faced armed opposition from both the Shona and the Ndebele. Southern Rhodesia, as the nation was then known, sacrificed the 1970s to a smoldering and bitter guerilla war that eventually led to the creation of Zimbabwe in 1979. White Rhodesia had done its best to eradicate aspects of local African culture it disapproved of, such as the Shona religion based on ancestor spirit possession using music, in particular, the metal-pronged, hand-held mbira. As a result, the Rhodesian experience left many black Zimbabweans in a state of alienation from their ancient cultures. The most significant musicians in Zimbabwe's short history—Thomas Mapfumo and Oliver Mtukudzi—have made it their business to redress that wrong and reconnect Zimbabweans with their African past.

Zimbabwe's music also reflects the foreign music styles that filled the airwaves during the colonial years and the war years. American and African jazz had a big impact early on. Later, rock 'n' roll, Congolese rumba and South African township music held sway. After 1970, Zimbabwean musicians became more and more original in their attempts to meld local rhythms, musical moods and melodies with popular sounds from the outside. Many unique and beautiful styles of music emerged in the process.

Distinct guitar-band sounds developed, characterized by lively, independent guitar and bass lines—not unlike Kenyan benga and other East African derivatives of Congolese rumba—and sweetly harmonized vocals that many compare to the early Beatles as well as the thumping downbeat characteristic of much southern African music. Jonah Moyo and Dvera Ngwena along with John Chibadura emphasized the rumba side, while James Chimombe pressed the South African aspect.

The music, variously known as sungura, jit and just Zimbabwe rumba became the mainstay of the nation's pop-music market. By the mid-'90s, the Zimbabwe rumba torch had passed to a new team, headed up by Simon Chimbetu and Leonard Zvakata. By the turn of the century, many guitar pop legends—including Chibadura, Chimombe, the great Leonard Dembo and Robson Banda, the so called prince of chimurenga—had died, some from AIDS. Chimbetu and Zvakata remained popular, but guitar rumba is being steadily overshadowed on one side by a dramatic rise in the popularity of local gospel music and by the encroachment of American hip-hop, Jamaican and U.K. reggae and slick, urban kwaito from South Africa. These styles have begun to dominate Zimbabwean radio, still under government control.

With Zimbabwean society facing political upheaval, a dramatically failing economy, and one of the worst AIDS crises in the world, these harder-edged foreign sounds seem to strike a chord. Once again, traditions and traditional music seem to be taking a back seat, although they now have a loyal international audience and thrive in Zimbabwe both in rural settings and as a kind of underground music in cities.
– Banning Eyre, Courtesy Afropop Worldwide: www.afropop.org