Author: Sororemvumba
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Lovemore Majaivana’s Totem Feast
Click or not: Lovemore Majaivana’s Totem FeastOnai Mushava discusses the metaphysical dimension of Zimbabwean mbaqanga pioneer Lovemore Majaivana’s music in the context of Ndebele orature. …
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The Butterfly Dialectic
Click or not: The Butterfly DialecticThe Butterfly Dialectic Karl Marx is out of a job in black America. His last prophet, Cornel West, beats a grumpy retreat from blackface capital everywhere he turns. The culture, with its emphasis on appearance and acquisition, is not so much an ideology as it is an ontology. “Money trees is the perfect place for shade”… …
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Tsitsi Dangarembga Opens up on Being Raped, Challenges “Callous” Mnangagwa
Click or not: Tsitsi Dangarembga Opens up on Being Raped, Challenges “Callous” MnangagwaZimbabwean soldiers allegedly raped 17 women and brutally assaulted many others on sensitive organs during the state crackdown on protests against a 150 % fuel price increase last month. Government has denied the claims of the women, who are currently in NGO safe houses, citing that only one of them has made a police report.… …
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Michael Lannas Inspired By Migrant Workers
Click or not: Michael Lannas Inspired By Migrant Workers“I grew up in what was Rhodesia. At a very early age (three or four years) I fell in love with African music. I would wake up at 5am to the sound of African migrant workers singing as they made their way to work at the Makgoweng (the place of the white people),” Lannas recalled. …
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What Does Onai Mushava Want? (Interview)
Click or not: What Does Onai Mushava Want? (Interview)What Does Onai Mushava Want? (Interview) “I start with a feeling. Let’s say love, sadness or settling scores with the system. Once I am aware of the feeling I want in ink, I become restless until it’s captured. I am picturing Genesis 1:2. All the elements are in place but out of alignment and the… …
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Poptain Got the Right Mix
Click or not: Poptain Got the Right MixZimdancehall newest star, Poptain, brings to the craft a mix of social consciousness, intricate wordplay, effortless cadence and casual patois fluency. The animated lyric video for his latest single, Freedom, may belatedly bring music lovers up to speed with his song writing abilities, but the underrated chanter has been ably grinding underground for half a… …
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Thomas Mapfumo and the Language of Zimdancehall
Click or not: Thomas Mapfumo and the Language of ZimdancehallThomas Mapfumo and the Language of Zimdancehall “You may say I do dancehall but do you know this name? Can you explain to us what dancehall means? It’s a Jamaican word,” said Mapfumo. “We don’t discourage our youths from entering music. But when you step into other people’s culture, do it in their language so… …
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Reply to “The Case for Colonialism”
Click or not: Reply to “The Case for Colonialism”Reply to “The Case for Colonialism” My kin didn’t go to your cities because they were starstruck by towering lights, wanted to read your Dickens or run your municipal errands. They went there because you took their farms, stole their cattle, raped their women, drove them to dry reserves and siphoned their wealth to the… …
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Thomas Mapfumo, Mbira Masters and Rhodesian Gatekeepers
Click or not: Thomas Mapfumo, Mbira Masters and Rhodesian GatekeepersThomas Mapfumo, Mbira Masters and Rhodesian Gatekeepers Mbira poetics in the moonshine, mid-century township culture, chimurenga renaissance, gospel, jit, sungura and dancehall are all genealogies of the Zimbabwean spirit. Today, the mbira may assure the country a proud category in world music but to get there, it had to survive repression by Rhodesian gatekeepers. Zimbabwe’s… …
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Roland Mhasvi’s Environmental Sequence
Click or not: Roland Mhasvi’s Environmental SequenceRoland Mhasvi’s Environmental Sequence Mhasvi advocates for the protection of biodiversity from the scourge of extractive capitalism with an urgency approaching the apocalyptic. The poet’s cause is especially pertinent cause as factory-made carcinogens and poisonous chemicals are endangering mankind and depleting the environment. Roland Mhasvi’s environmentally themed poetry anthology, “Time of the Rupture,” is… …