I got to Zimbabwe just a year later after the commencement of my journey. I had been on my way to Capetown, South Africa but I decided to stay in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, for sometime. The standard of life in Harare was quite high and I could rest and relax after tough trip in east Africa especially through Sudan and Ethiopia.

meeting a mbira maker…

There were many Japanese tourists like me at a guesthouse I stayed in Harare and some of them were learning a music instrument I had never seen before. It was the mbira, a traditional Zimbabwean instrument. I was fascinated by the beautiful sound like music box and decided to buy one for myself because the mbira is smaller in size than an A4 notebook and I thought it practical to travel with.

Even now, a good quality mbira is hard to get at any souvenir shop in the city. Therefore I asked one of the Japanese I met at the guesthouse, to take me to a township where I would be certain to obtain one. It was quite an experience riding in a bus 100% full of African black people with fixated curious eyes on us because we were Asian.

The township was the home of a family of mbira makers. As we arrived, family members were making the instruments without the help of machines, in a small yard in front of their house under the shade of a guava tree, nets hanging in the air. I was amazed. The beautiful sounding mbira was made from a piece of wood, cut by a hoe and hammered waste steel rods. The whole process was alchemy to me; changing waste to gold.

I ordered an mbira to be collected two weeks later. I quickly proceeded to learn a couple of songs from the Japanese friend and a local young guy.

attending a ceremony…

Mbira music is played at ceremony not at dwellings. Therefore when I heard there was going to be a ceremony at the mbira maker's place, I decided to join it on a weekend.

I could not understand fully what was going on because I didn't speak their language, Shona. At the center of the small yard was a cheerful dance party with mbira music. The mbira was played inside the gourd, which resonates, amplifying the effect. I was surprised by the loud sound produced by the gourd shakers which keep the rhythm of the music more than drum does; the mbira sound was drowned at times. There were three or four mbira players, two to three shakers and a drum. Mbira makes powerful dance music and we enjoyed dancing with the participants in the afternoon.

As the night drew to a close the party turned mysterious. In front of the mbira maker's wife was a beer mug filled with sweet red wine, three raw eggs mixed together and a small mountain of broken eggshells in a dish. In one gulp she drank it all; the man refilled the mug with wine and eggs again.

She is a spirit-medium and is able to get possessed with help of the special drink and mbira music. Under the spell she calls her ancestor's spirits to give participants advice and massages. She had been usually a soft-spoken woman during my visits, but it was different now. She smoked cigarettes non-stop and danced and shouted like a wild animal. When she gave the signal, the mbira music stopped and everyone at the party listened to her carefully.

I had longed to come to Africa to live an experience like this . At the time, I was interested in the mbira music but did not dig much deeper on the rest and left Zimbabwe to Capetown after one and a half months stay to continue my trip.

second visit to Zimbabwe…

I went to Capetown and wanted to fly to South America but my budget was not enough to do so. Instead of taking a flight to another continent, I enjoyed a beautiful summer in Capetown. For more than 7 months I meet wonderful people, worked a bit but then decided to go back to Zimbabwe to learn more traditional songs of mbira.

On the way back to Harare, I visited the Grand Zimbabwe Ruins; the greatest ruins of medieval city found in sub-Saharan black Africa and a homeland for Shona people. In the park, there was a Shona village with around 10 African huts where they show the tourists how they lived anciently, their fortune telling, and other customs. It is in this village that I met an mbira group. We played the mbira and spent the entire afternoon together. At this time there are not many tourists in Zimbabwe given the political situation, and people can afford to sit.

I was invited me to a ceremony two days later; the band had been offered to play at a three year memorial ceremony commemorating a passed away husband in a small village near Grand Zimbabwe. It was already dark when we got off the bus in the middle the bush in East Africa. We walked up to the hill under the beautiful moonlight. As we walked towards the village on a small trail, we could hear the sound of drums and singing from far away. After a 30-minute walk, we arrived at a house in the village without electricity.

The locals welcomed us (including me! always amazing that Zimbabweans have such a great hospitality). We greeted them in a formal way: clapping hands slowly and women made strange sound like [hererererere]. The host showed us homemade beer called Seven days. The beer is made from millet, the ex-staple food before the maze introduced to Africa, and takes seven days to brew. The locals brew it for the ancestors and then drink it. They served us supper, sadza (maize porridge) and a piece of meat.

The mbira band began playing in a small round hut full of relatives and village people in the candlelight. I enjoyed dancing with them in the heartwarming atmosphere. It was wonderful to see the old ladies still actively dancing. It was an overnight ceremony (I was exhausted and slept halfway through the ceremony). The next morning, everyone prayed near the grave of the deceased husband and sacrificed a goat.

features of the mbira music…

As I learn the mbira more and more from local players, I have found that the playing style is highly sophisticated, much more than I had initially thought. There are so many traditional mbira songs like the three chord-blues, which repeat again and again. Some beginners feel bored after some time. Yet, we enjoy playing different melodies, improvising the melodies and interacting with each other. There is no set beginning for mbira music and no end either. When it is played in a ceremony, a man starts playing a song and another man jumps in, shakers are added, and all is continued for more than tebminutes until people stop dancing or they request another song.

When I played the mbira at a ceremony for the first time, the speed of the song was too fast for me (good for dancing though) and extremely tiring. It is amazing that those mbira players can keep playing all night long.

In my opinion, the mbira music is at its best when more than 2 people play it. Then, the beautiful mixture of different melodies and synchronous rhythms becomes magical. To be truthful, when I learned some songs in 2001, I didn't know the entire structure of the music. I knew some different versions of the same song but didn't know that both versions could be played at the same time because the versions sounded totally different. Even after I had a better understanding of the structure, it took some time to get used to the structure.

The Shona people have developed a rather complicated polyrhythmic playing style. There are too many pairs of music, which sound very different but very beautiful together. Further, many mbira makers have their own styles, their own scales, and own sounds, which don't go along with another makers' mbira. They are unlike western music scales and it takes time for ears to get used to them.

I have been fortunate to know how the real mbira music is played in the rural areas. However, the great tradition of the mbira has been fading from this country. The increasing westernization, the influence of Christianity, which denies the existence of ancestral spirits and the police which give trouble to the mbira players are among the main culprits.

People in the city don't celebrate the ceremonies like before. Most of young people prefer American hip-hop, R&B or Rumba music. However, they have shown some admiration towards me when they find out that I learn their old culture.

I have heard some tourists say Africa is good for watching animals, the beautiful natural scenery, but not for its cultural heritage. One of the reasons for the complaints is that many African people did not have written language, but rather an oral literature and did not build big too many large structures like Grand Zimbabwe.

However, I have found myself immersed in the rich culture inherited from generation to generation in the music, which has the African beat, the heartbeat of Africa. I am proud of being part of those who hand down the legacy to the next generation.