MBIRA dzeNharira will tomorrow perform at a concert dubbed Toita zveDeze at the Mbira Centre in Harare.
Report by Tinashe Sibanda Entertainment Reporter
The talented mbira group will give the Mbira Centre audience the pleasure of experiencing the mbira played and heard the way it was centuries ago, unplugged and intimate.
“The sound is warmer, sweeter and more ethereal, One of the most beautiful night sounds one can hear in rural Zimbabwe is that of mbira music floating to your ears from a mbira performance a few villages away,” said Mbira Centre director Albert Chimedza.
He said historically and in present-day rural Zimbabwe and during all non-circular performances, the mbira was strictly an acoustic instrument amplified by a gourd and that was what the concert would bring out.
Chimedza added that with the advent of modern entertainment venues where large numbers of patrons were part of a business plan, virtually all mbira ensembles in the country’s public spaces used PA systems or pick pus on their mbiras.
“In effect what urban audiences are used to listening to is an amplified electric mbira sound. Mbira dzeNharira were pioneers in this genre and to this day their electric mbiras give the best electric mbira sound in Zimbabwe,” Chimedza said.
He said after the concert there would be an Afrobeat after-party that would be hosted by one of Africa’s leading Afrobeat radio DJs, Mannasseh Phiri from Zambia.
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He said although Phiri was a qualified medical doctor by profession and an Aids activist for years, he had also been an Afrobeat DJ for 42 years and he used that platform for his activism purposes.
“The event will certainly be a great music and dance experience not to be missed with two concerts, the afternoon one will be a family show and the evening one for adults,” added Chimedza.
