By Dr Michelina Andreucci

ON March 8, we commemorated the United Nations International Women’s Day (IWD) and it is worth remembering that women are the carriers of our culture – ndovanobereka hunhu wedu – ‘women carry the culture on their backs’.
In fact, in Zimbabwe, women mbira players articulated the First and Second Chimurenga in their musical repertoire.
One of my favourite musicians is Stella Chiweshe.
In 1984, while I was on a study sabbatical at La Scuola Politecnica di Design in Milano, I was privileged to attend her solo concert in Italy, which was part of her tour with her late brother Elfigio that included Germany, Great Britain, India, China and Korea.
She has since toured Italy more than a dozen times.
Women in the Shona context were often viewed as the recipients of spiritual messages; our most notable and noble being Charwe Nehanda.
The liberation struggle is the definition of our history and the foundation of post-colonial Zimbabwe.
From Stella Chiweshe, Chiwoniso Maraire to Hope Masike, more than three generations of mbira players have articulated the Chimurenga wars fought against colonisation and expressed its significance in liberating Zimbabwe.
As articulated in the lyrics, mbira music composed and performed by women has often been interpreted as vectors for national development.
The enduring artistic legacy and musical memory of the country is highlighted with the poignant voices of women mbira players.
What is striking is the acceptance of the mystical magic of mbira music in venues as diverse and apart as Norway, Germany, UK and Poland.
A revolutionary monograph of mbira music in this country cannot be written without inscribing the contribution made by Stella Chiweshe; an important and major figure to the history of contemporary mbira music of Zimbabwe who had, in the 1970s, already predicted the victory of the Second Chimurenga in her songs.
As a woman, she has over time single-handedly defended the socio-cultural territory of Zimbabwe’s cultural memory, orature and intangible heritage through her music.
Her music plays an explicit functional and philosophical purpose; from commemorative epics recalling ancient and pre-colonial life exemplary in her song ‘Chaminuka’, an epic of the famous Shona progenitor medium, to the militant and revolutionary yet celebratory mbira song ‘Chave Chimurenga’.
Her ceremonial and supplicative music is rooted in Zimbabwe’s sociological, geo-physical, spiritual, political and folk narrative orature.
Mbira player, vocalist and composer Stella Rambisai Nekati Chiweshe was born to a coventional traditional Shona family in 1946, in Mujumi Village, Mhondoro, 45km south-west of the capital city.
She began performing publicly in the early 1970s, and currently resides in Germany.
However, despite her re-location to Europe, she has had a spirited career in Africa, the US and Europe.
Using a borrowed mbira instrument, Chiweshe recorded her first single ‘Kasahwa’ in 1974, which launched her career.
The recording went gold in 1975 and introduced her signatory style to the world, characterised by the emotional mystical and socio-religious content which expresses universally relevant sociological and environmental issues.
She is one of the few female players of the instrument, which she learned to play in 1966 when very few women were permitted to play the instrument owing to its banishment by the colonial settlers and to cultural traditional constraints.
She initiated the ‘Earthquake Band’ in 1979, after a Rhodesian recording company refused to record mbira music.
In 1989 the musician-composer founded ‘Mother Earth’, a women’s group in Zimbabwe.
She also organised an international women’s music festival held in Zimbabwe.
Writing in his book‚ The Womb of the Song’ (© 2009) Dr Tony Monda states: “Her music is at once cathartic, lyrical and demanding, siezing the listerner’s emotions and recharging one’s soul in a way that sends the audience fortified on their way home… Having composed and performed her music in Zimbabwe, Europe and the US, for four decades, she has traversed three generations of women mbira players and continues to produce vital and ever-evolving new musical works, even in this digital-dominated age.
“Pathos and melancholia are shaped into melodies, prayers and lamentations to the ancestral spirits of the country. Her lyrics are written like a prayer. She unobtrusively alters her melodic and soprano rhythmic structure with a flow of high-pitched female ululations. These sounds are typical of cultural ceremonies in Zimbabwe… Her music, which is both bold and nostalgic, reconnected the newly migrated urban populace of the 1970s in Zimbabwe to their rural roots. The sound of the Mbira negated the physical and spiritual dislocation experienced by the people due to the urban migration of African people in colonial times.
“She is the Grand Dame and quintessential contemporary mbira virtuoso. In her strong forceful voice, her songs are punctuated by ululations and stridulant onomatopoeia which range from a baritone to a transfixing mezzo soprano-pitched tremolo of tribal pride to her ancestors… The virtuoso musician-performer is a full performer – animated, entrancing and reverent, she represents the archetype ‘godmother of the mbira’… She often shapes the emotional texture of each word which manifests a presence beyond her voice. Stella Chiweshe’s music demands close listening.”
An energetic performer, unusually spritely for her age, her high-powered performances often induce even the most sedate Western audiences to dance.
With her imposing, dignified stature, colourful costumes, intricate mbira rhythms, vocal vitality and spectacular precision of dancing, the outstanding Stella Chiweshe is the epitome of mbira virtuoso.
Her music sheds a universal moral insight into the nature of the people of Zimbabwe.
Breaking gender barriers, Chiweshe was a founder member of the original Traditional National Dance Company of Zimbabwe, where she participated as a leading mbira solo player, dancer and actress.
In the mid-1980s, she played the role of Ambuya Nehanda, Zimbabwe’s renowned national heroine, who was executed in 1896 by the colonial Government in a film that earned her great success.
Her music has been the subject of several international concerts, films and books.
In 1989, she starred in I Am the Future, a film about a young woman who travels to the big city to escape the fighting in the rural areas of Zimbabwe during its war of indpendence. (Monda,T.M.; ‘The Womb of the Song’ © 2009)
In 1998, Stella Chiweshe created, directed, choreographed and performed in a theatre piece titled ‘Chiedza’ – light.
Over the years, Chiweshe has participated in the WOMAD festivals held in various venues around the world.
In WOMAD 1994 Festival in North America where Peter Gabriel also participated, she played solo in front of more than 10 000 spectators
At the first ‘TSAMA Awards’ (later named ZIMA), held in 2000, Chiweshe was awarded Female Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 2005, through the then Ministry of Information, the Zimbabwe Government took over the sponsorship of ZIMA and renamed the awards.
At the 2005 Zimbabwe Music Silver Jubilee Awards, she was awarded the Female Most Outstanding Contribution to the Music Industry of the Past 25 Years, and Best Mbira Artiste of the Past 25 Years.
The psychological consequences of giving preference to international and regional stars at the expense of our own will soon make them inaccessible to Zimbabwean audiences.
Chiweshe is rightly crowned Queen Mother of Zimbabwe’s Mbira Music – an icon to celebrate during International Women’s Day, 2017.
Dr Michelina Rudo Andreucci is a Zimbabwean-Italian Researcher, industrial design consultant lecturer and specialist hospitality interior decorator. She is a published author in her field.
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