The most famous artist from Zimbabwe,
a singer who plays the traditional instrument "mbira".
Svetlana Spajic Latinovic, a domestic singer of authentic folk
music, will appear as special guest.
Zimbabwe's foremost Mbira player, Stella Rambisai Chiweshe
blends haunting mbira lines with percussion and call-and-response
singing behind her evocative vocals that soothe, comfort, provoke
and then bite with the harshness of an acid drop. She sings
and plays songs of liberation, spiritual experience and social
commentary.
Mbira, the classic Zimbabwean thumb-piano, is a medium for
playing songs, handed down from generation to generation for
centuries, and for maintaining contact with the spirits of
the Shona people. In traditional Zimbabwe Shona culture, at
special ceremonies, dead ancestors are called down by the sounds
of the mbira, possessing a person through whom they communicate
with the gathered people. Stella Chiweshe afterwards does not
even remember what had been sung through her. Sometimes those
words only few, mostly old, people cam understand. For Stella
the songs come as visions and dreams into her playing mbira.
When Zimbabwe was still the white settler's 'Rhodesia', Stella
started to receive underground recognition as a musician and
medium at these kind of ceremonies. After playing all night
in forbidden meetings she would return to her daytime struggle
of survival as a maid in a colonial household. After independence
she was invited to become a member of the newly founded 'National
Dance Company of Zimbabwe', where she soon played a leading
role as solo mbira player, dancer and performer. Since then
Stella has experimented with transferring the mbira music into
a Western performance context without losing her close relationship
to the tradition.
Selected Discography:
Talking Mbira 2002
Shungu 1994
Kumusha 1991
Chisi 1990
Ambuya?/Ndizvozvo 1987
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