There are moments in Zimbabwean music when the body appears to speak before the mouth has uttered a word.
A dancer bends, turns, stamps, shakes the waist or throws the shoulders into rhythm, and almost immediately somebody watching from the margins begins to interpret the movement through the language of sexuality.
A woman moves her hips and she is called provocative. A man performs an exaggerated pelvic movement and he is celebrated for his energy. A group of dancers move with abandon and someone asks whether the performance has become “too sexual”. But perhaps the more interesting question is not whether the body is moving sexually. Perhaps it is whether we have forgotten how to read the dancing body.
When did sensuality become synonymous with sexual invitation? When did a movement associated with fertility become an instruction about sex? When did the African body become something that must constantly be defended against the moral gaze of the observer? These questions become particularly important in Zimbabwe because music has historically been inseparable from the social worlds in which it is produced.
Across Shona, Ndebele, Ndau, Tonga, Kalanga and other cultural communities, music has not simply been an arrangement of sound for passive consumption.
It has been woven into ceremony, spirituality, courtship, work, mourning, celebration, storytelling, communal identity and the transmission of memory.
This means that the dancing body cannot be read as though it were a sentence with only one possible meaning. A body can celebrate. It can mourn. It can remember. It can court. It can ridicule. It can invoke fertility. It can communicate strength. It can participate in spirituality. It can express identity. And yes, a body can also express sexuality. The mistake begins when we assume that every sensual movement is a sexual proposition. There is an enormous difference between a culture acknowledging sexuality and a culture instructing its members to behave sexually.
Few Zimbabwean traditions expose this problem more dramatically than Mbende/Jerusarema, the dance associated with Zezuru Shona communities in eastern Zimbabwe.
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The performance is characterised by acrobatic and sensual movements by both women and men, accompanied by intricate drumming, clapping, whistles and other rhythmic elements. Yet one of the most revealing features of Mbende is that it does not depend on sexually explicit lyrics. Its communication is carried primarily through rhythm, movement and symbolism.
UNESCO recognises Mbende/Jerusarema as an important element of Zimbabwe's intangible cultural heritage and notes its associations with fertility, family and social life.
That detail should make us pause. If the performance is not built around lyrics telling young people to engage in sexual activity, then what exactly was being condemned when missionaries historically objected to its movements? The answer lies partly in the body itself. The dance was understood through the symbolism of the mole, mbende, which carried associations with fertility, sexuality and family. Missionaries interpreted the physical movements through their own moral framework and considered them sexually explicit. The name Jerusarema subsequently became associated with the dance in the context of Christian missionary influence.
The history is revealing because it demonstrates that the sexualisation of African cultural performance did not begin with the contemporary music video.
There is an older history of looking at African bodies and deciding what those bodies are allowed to mean. A community could understand a movement through fertility, vitality, continuity and family, while an outsider could look at the same movement and see obscenity. The movement had not necessarily changed. The cultural vocabulary through which it was being interpreted had.
This history should make us cautious whenever we describe a traditional dance as “sexual”. Sexual according to whom? Suggestive according to whose cultural vocabulary? Immoral according to whose history? These are not merely academic questions. They determine whether communities are allowed to understand their own cultural expressions on their own terms.
The fertility dimension of Mbende is particularly important because contemporary society has become remarkably comfortable collapsing fertility, sexuality and promiscuity into one idea. They are not the same. In societies where family continuity, agricultural productivity and communal survival were central to social organisation, fertility could signify something much larger than individual sexual gratification. A fertility symbol could speak of life, continuity and the future of the community. It does not automatically become a public instruction to pursue sexual behaviour.
There is a profound difference between representation and prescription. A culture can represent sexuality without prescribing sexual behaviour. A song can narrate desire without instructing its listeners to pursue it. A dance can embody fertility without becoming a lesson in promiscuity. Once we recognise that distinction, the supposedly simple question of whether traditional music is “sexual” becomes considerably more complicated.
The same complexity becomes visible when we move from the Zezuru world into the Ndau cultural landscape, particularly through muchongoyo. Muchongoyo is a powerful dance-drumming tradition in which the body appears to become another percussion instrument.
The feet stamp the ground, the dancers move collectively, and the rhythmic intensity creates an atmosphere of strength and discipline. Its historical associations include warrior traditions, communal identity and celebrations, although its performance has evolved and is now encountered in a range of social and cultural settings.
Watch muchongoyo closely and the first thing that emerges is not sexuality but physical power. The feet speak. The ground answers. The dancers move as a collective rather than as isolated individuals seeking personal attention. The body becomes a vehicle through which a community remembers itself.
To describe such physicality primarily through sexuality would therefore be to miss the cultural vocabulary of the performance. Muchongoyo can communicate strength, courage, discipline, solidarity and identity. The masculine body may be prominent, but masculinity itself is not synonymous with sexual aggression. Here again, context changes meaning.
Muchongoyo also reminds us that Zimbabwean traditional music cannot be placed inside a museum and labelled “traditional” as though it stopped evolving centuries ago. It has passed through colonialism, nationalism, Christianity, modernity, political mobilisation and contemporary cultural performance. Its meanings have shifted because communities themselves have changed.
This is important because one of the greatest misconceptions about African traditional music is that tradition means immobility. It does not. Tradition is often the accumulated result of generations of negotiation. Communities preserve some elements, discard others, adapt others and create new forms around old foundations. What we call tradition today was often once somebody's innovation.
The same question can be asked of Ndebele musical and dance traditions, including isitshikitsha and related performance practices.
To encounter such performances outside their cultural context is to risk seeing only the visual body: the movement of the hips, the rhythm of the feet, the energy of the dancers, the vocal intensity, the ululation and the interaction between performers.
But within the cultural setting, the performance can carry a much wider social vocabulary. It can be a celebration of community, identity and belonging. It can accompany important social occasions. It can create an environment in which people participate rather than simply watch. The dancer is not necessarily presenting a body for erotic consumption; the dancer is participating in a communal act.
This distinction becomes even more important when traditional performances move onto modern stages. The stage changes the relationship between performer and audience. The camera changes it further. A community may see an ancestral movement. A tourist may see exotic entertainment. A television producer may see spectacle. A music-video director may see erotic imagery. A social-media platform may see a fifteen-second clip capable of generating thousands of views.
The movement may remain the same while the gaze changes.
That is the danger of decontextualisation. Once a cultural performance is removed from the social world that gave it meaning, the audience can impose an entirely different interpretation upon it. The camera can isolate the waist. The editor can remove the surrounding ceremony. The algorithm can reduce a complex cultural performance to a few seconds of bodily movement. A tradition that originally carried histories of community and identity can become a visual commodity.
This does not mean the African body should be hidden. Nor does it mean that sensuality should be removed from artistic expression. It means that the body should not be allowed to become the only thing we see.
The same principle can be applied to jiti, a Zimbabwean musical form whose rhythmic energy has made it particularly powerful as a dance-oriented sound. Jiti enters the body almost before the mind has time to analyse it. The rhythm encourages movement, repetition and participation. But its danceability should not automatically be translated into sexuality.
Sometimes the body simply responds to rhythm.
There is pleasure in movement that is not sexual pleasure. There is pleasure in communal celebration. There is pleasure in belonging. There is pleasure in hearing a rhythm that reminds someone of home. There is pleasure in watching elders dance at a family gathering. There is pleasure in the collective laughter that follows a particularly energetic performance.
Modern entertainment culture has sometimes taught us to understand bodily pleasure almost exclusively through sexuality because sexuality sells. The body attracts attention. Attention creates visibility. Visibility creates clicks, streams and commercial value. The body becomes content.
But traditional communal performance did not necessarily operate according to that commercial logic. People danced because the community danced. They danced because the occasion demanded participation. They danced because rhythm created a social atmosphere in which sitting still seemed almost unnatural.
This difference matters.
It reminds us that the body has always possessed forms of pleasure that are not reducible to sex.
The mbira takes us into an entirely different dimension of musical embodiment. Within Shona cultural contexts, mbira has historically been connected to spirituality, communal life, ancestral relationships, memory and cultural identity. The physical act of playing the instrument therefore carries meanings that cannot be adequately captured by describing it simply as entertainment.
The fingers move across the metal keys. The notes return in cycles. The rhythms intertwine. The sound creates an environment rather than merely filling silence. In certain cultural contexts, the music becomes part of a conversation between the living, the community and the ancestral world.
Here the musical body becomes a spiritual body.
This is another reason why reducing Zimbabwean musical traditions to their most visually sensual dimensions can be so intellectually impoverishing. If we interpret every movement through sexuality, we lose the vocabulary of spirituality. If we interpret every rhythm through entertainment, we lose the vocabulary of community. If we interpret every dance through spectacle, we lose the vocabulary of memory.
The question is therefore not whether sexuality exists within Zimbabwean music. Of course it does. Zimbabweans are human beings, and human beings have always used music to talk about love, attraction, courtship, marriage, fertility and desire.
The more useful question is what the music does with sexuality.
Does it celebrate love? Does it describe desire? Does it ridicule social expectations? Does it objectify women? Does it challenge masculinity? Does it reinforce gender stereotypes? Does it educate? Does it entertain? Does it simply tell a story?
These distinctions are necessary because contemporary Zimbabwean popular music can sometimes reproduce problematic ideas about gender and sexuality. Some songs reduce women to sexual objects. Some performances glorify male sexual conquest. Some lyrics normalise forms of masculinity in which dominance becomes evidence of manhood.
We should not romanticise tradition by pretending that everything traditional was innocent while everything contemporary is corrupt. That would be another form of historical laziness.
The more intellectually honest position is to recognise that music, whether traditional or contemporary, can reproduce social power as easily as it can challenge it.
This is where gender becomes central.
A male musician can sing about sexual conquest and be described as confident. A woman can sing about desire and suddenly become immoral. A man can dance aggressively and be praised for his energy. A woman can perform a similar movement and suddenly her character becomes part of the conversation.
The issue is therefore not simply sexuality.
It is power over interpretation.
Who is allowed to define their own body? Who is permitted to articulate desire? Who is allowed to be sensual without being interpreted as sexually available? Who is allowed to perform without having their morality placed on trial?
The female performer often carries a burden that the male performer does not. Her clothing becomes evidence. Her choreography becomes evidence. Her lyrics become evidence. Her body becomes evidence.
This is why discussions of Zimbabwean music and sexuality must also be discussions about the gendered gaze. We cannot claim to defend culture while simultaneously using culture to regulate women's bodies.
Women artists should be able to sing about desire without being reduced to desire. They should be able to dance without surrendering ownership of the meaning of their bodies. They should be able to be sensual without becoming commodities.
The same principle should also liberate male musicians from narrow expectations of masculinity. Zimbabwean men should not be required to perform aggression, sexual conquest or emotional hardness simply because popular culture has repeatedly presented these characteristics as proof of manhood.
A healthier musical culture would allow artists to be complicated.
And this brings the conversation to another issue that is, in my view, increasingly urgent in Zimbabwean music: originality.
We have misunderstood tradition in two opposite ways. We sometimes sexualise the traditional body while simultaneously freezing the traditional sound. We look at an old dance and ask whether it is morally acceptable. Then we look at an old musical legend and ask how we can reproduce their sound.
Tradition becomes something to police on one side and something to imitate on the other.
But Zimbabwe's great musicians did not become great because they were perfect imitators.
They became great because they became themselves.
Thomas Mapfumo did not create a lasting musical identity by simply reproducing what had existed before him. He transformed musical ideas and eventually became associated with a sound that was recognisably his own. Oliver Mtukudzi likewise developed a musical language in which his voice, guitar, rhythm, lyrics and social commentary became inseparable from his artistic identity.
Their greatness was not simply that they were successful musicians. Their greatness was that they built musical worlds. That is precisely what contemporary artists should be encouraged to do.
We keep asking who the next Oliver Mtukudzi will be. We ask who the next Thomas Mapfumo will be. We search for the next legend while sometimes ignoring the uncomfortable truth that a legend cannot be produced by imitation.
Why should an artist spend an entire career trying to become the next somebody? Why can they not become the first themselves?
There is nothing wrong with revival. Revival can be culturally valuable. It can restore forgotten instruments. It can reconnect young people with older rhythms. It can preserve endangered performance practices. It can return historical memory to communities that have begun to lose it.
But revival becomes problematic when it becomes the entire creative agenda. If every generation is encouraged to reproduce the music of the previous generation, eventually there will be no musical future only an increasingly polished past.
The irony is that the legends we celebrate today were themselves once young musicians experimenting with the possibilities available to them.
Every genre was once somebody's experiment. Before a musical form became respectable, somebody probably had to sound strange. Before it became “traditional”, somebody had to be accused of doing something new. Before the sound acquired a name, somebody had to make the first version of it.
That is how musical cultures develop.
Chimurenga itself demonstrates this principle. Its importance was not simply in reproducing older musical forms, but in transforming musical expression into a language capable of engaging the political and social realities of its time.
Zimdancehall provides another example. It did not emerge as a carbon copy of Jamaican dancehall. Zimbabwean artists adapted the broader form through local languages, urban experiences, social commentary, local rhythms and distinctly Zimbabwean realities.
A young Zimbabwean artist today occupies a cultural world radically different from that of musicians who came before. They live between local and global influences. They can move between Ndebele, Shona, Tonga, Kalanga, English and other linguistic worlds. They can listen to mbira in the morning, hip-hop in the afternoon, gospel in the evening and electronic music at midnight. They can record from a bedroom and distribute a song to listeners across continents.
Why, then, should they be expected to sound exactly like 1978? Why should contemporary Zimbabwean music permanently live inside nostalgia? The past should inform the artist and should not imprison the artist.
This does not mean abandoning tradition. In fact, it requires knowing tradition more deeply. An artist who understands mbira can ask what its cyclical structures might contribute to contemporary composition. An artist inspired by muchongoyo can explore how its collective energy, call-and-response structures and physical intensity might inform a contemporary performance. A musician working with Ndebele traditions can investigate how vocal textures, language, rhythm and movement can converse with contemporary production.
This is the difference between copying tradition and conversing with tradition. The first reproduces and the second creates. And sometimes genuine respect for an ancestor requires disagreement.
Tradition contains beauty, but it can also contain hierarchy. It can contain gender exclusions. It can be transformed by colonialism, Christianity, nationalism, migration, politics and commercialisation. The tradition that reaches us today is already a product of countless historical negotiations.
There has never been a completely frozen Zimbabwean musical tradition. There have only been communities and generations deciding what to carry, what to change and what to create.
That means today's artist deserves the same creative freedom.
They deserve the right to sound strange, they deserve the right to experiment, the right to fail and the right to create something that does not yet have a name. Because one of those experiments may become tomorrow's tradition.
This is why artists need to develop their own musical architecture. A recognisable artist is not merely someone with a good voice. Artistic identity emerges from the relationship between voice, rhythm, language, lyrics, instrumentation, production, performance, visual identity and worldview.
Eventually, the listener should be able to hear the artist before the artist's name is announced.
That first guitar phrase should say something and drum pattern should carry an identity. That voice should have a history while the lyrics should reveal a particular way of seeing the world.
The question should not simply be, “Who does this artist sound like?” It should become, “Who is this artist?” Influence is inevitable. No artist creates from nothing. But there is a difference between inheritance and imitation. To say, “I learned from Oliver Mtukudzi,” is inheritance. To spend an entire career trying to sound like Oliver Mtukudzi is imitation. To study Thomas Mapfumo's transformation of musical language is inheritance. To reproduce his sound indefinitely is dependence.
The responsibility of the contemporary artist is to take what has been inherited and make it speak to a world that the ancestor never experienced. This responsibility also applies to gender. Zimbabwean women musicians should not have to choose between being “traditional” and being “modern”. They should not have to become sexually provocative because the market rewards provocative imagery. Nor should they be forced into conservative performance because society is uncomfortable with women who possess expressive bodies and voices. They should be allowed to own the meaning of their bodies.And men should be afforded the same freedom to escape narrow definitions of masculinity.
The future of Zimbabwean music should be spacious enough for artists to be complicated. Perhaps that is what we have lost: not tradition, but complexity.
We have become too quick to reduce Mbende to the movement of a waist. Too quick to reduce muchongoyo to the stamping of feet. Too quick to reduce isitshikitsha to visual spectacle. Too quick to reduce jiti to danceability. Too quick to reduce mbira to an instrument. Too quick to reduce contemporary music to sexual imagery. Too quick to reduce women performers to their bodies. Too quick to reduce musical legends to templates. And too quick to reduce young musicians to imitators.
Zimbabwean culture deserves a more generous imagination. Our traditions deserve to be heard in their complexity.
Mbende is more than sensual movement. Muchongoyo is more than physical strength. Isitshikitsha is more than spectacle. Jiti is more than a dance rhythm. Mbira is more than an instrument. And contemporary popular music is more than sexuality.
Each represents people attempting to make sense of themselves through sound and movement.
That is why we should listen more carefully. The body may be speaking, but we should not assume that we already know what it is saying. And perhaps the same lesson applies to music itself.
We should stop asking today's musicians to repeat what yesterday's musicians already said. We should listen for the sentence that has not yet been written, the rhythm that has not yet been heard and the musical identity that has not yet been named.
Because one day today's music will become somebody else's tradition. Today's dancers will become tomorrow's elders. Today's experiments will become tomorrow's heritage. Today's strange sounds may become tomorrow's familiar genres.
And when that happens, future generations should not have to ask why Zimbabwe's musicians spent their time recreating the past. They should be able to say that they inherited deeply, questioned boldly and created fearlessly. Most importantly, they should be able to say:
Our musical legends should therefore be our ancestors, not our templates. The greatest tribute we can give them is not to reproduce their careers. It is to create something so unmistakably our own that future generations will one day ask not, “Who was the next Oliver Mtukudzi?” or “Who was the next Thomas Mapfumo?”
But: “Who was the generation that created this?”
That is the musical future Zimbabwe should be building.
* Raymond Millagre Langa is a Zimbabwean researcher, journalist and cultural practitioner whose work focuses on culture, social justice, identity and development. He is the founder of Indebo Edutainment Trust and writes extensively on the transformative role of the arts in shaping public discourse and advancing social change.
