Voice of the Ancestors
the blessing of mbira dzaVadzimu
There’s a slice of heaven to be found in Western Mass in the form of a rambling used book shop overlooking a brook. You can wander through its countless rooms, then sit down and peruse your poetry and non-fiction finds over noodles while listening to the sound of the water. No, it would not be a hardship to spend a week at the Book Mill (motto: “Books you don’t need in a place you can’t find”).
But this post isn’t about a used book shop, even the most wonderful of them, nor is it about the used CD shop that may still exist, against all odds, around back. Though we’re getting warmer with the CD’s.
I wouldn’t be mentioning these places at all here, but for a particular CD I once found there, an album called “Journey of the Spirit” by one Ephat Mujuru. “Journey” was to become one of my favorite albums and, more than that, to open for me an entirely new and profound music. Fittingly enough, the album is leading me on quite a journey of my own.
The liner notes to “Journey” relate how Mr Mujuru, a virtuoso player and a great-hearted man, was called to the mbira by the ancestral spirits. As a child he received lessons in dreams, and, after a period of resistance, ultimately surrendered to the call, devoting himself to the path of the gyenyambira (master player capable of playing for the spirits in traditional ceremonies). He relates how his mbira-playing elders may not have had much money, compared to the colonial bureaucrats in what was then Rhodesia, but they were happy. Mbira, after all, has the ability to bring people together and into resonance with one another, across space and time. It is, to put it a bit dramatically, a time traveling device. An old technology, indistinguishable from magic.
A bit about the instrument itself. Of the several types of mbira, perhaps the most central for the Shona and for Mujuru is the mbira dzaVadzimu, or ‘mbira of the ancestors.’ This instrument which spans two octaves and has between 22 and 28 metallic keys mounted in three separate registers on a hardwood board. The instrument itself and its music are a conduit between the realms, at least when played in certain contexts. As a fledgling mbira player myself, I can feel the instrument’s trance-inducing nature, the sense of closeness with the ancestors that it opens.
And no wonder, when the repertoire goes back centuries, perhaps as much as a millennium or more. It consists in large part of songs said to please the spirits, songs like Nyamaropa or Nhemamusasa (here’s another Nhemamusasa for comparison, and here’s another of Nyamaropa).
These classic songs are rich with symbolism; Nhemamusasa, for instance, means “to build shelter” and can be played for celebratory purposes as upon the completion of a new house, or more generally as a reminder of the importance of preparing for the future. Yet others consider it an old war song, a reference to temporary shelters built by soldiers. It may be all of these things. It seems the old, “big” songs contain volumes in their phrase or two of lyrics.
New compositions exist too, of course, yet are sometimes considered to be rediscovered pieces of the ancient repertoire. In this sense the music is circular, with pieces offered to the spirits, and others received from them. Other ways that circularity is apparent: the mbira is generally played inside a deze, a round calabash that serves as low-tech amplifier. And most strikingly, the music itself is round, i.e. circular; repetitive and ever-changing, like a river or a rolling wheel. (The song Chamutengere, here played by two mbira greats, both speaks of and illustrates this circular quality.)
The music is deceptively simple, in one respect, and also demandingly complex. Multiple mbira parts, called kushaura (the leading part) and kutsinhira (the following or interweaving part) interlock; new melodies emerge from the interplay, while the gourd shaker patterns contribute to a polyrhythmic feel. Melodic and rhythmic variations mount along with improvisational possibilities, so that a ‘simple’ piece can stretch out for 40 minutes and never quite repeat itself.
I can make these observations now that I’ve begun to play and study mbira. But for years I didn’t bother to analyze; I simply listened and lost myself in the music. I hope you’ll be inspired to do the same.
Further reading and resources:
Mbira.org (general information, instruments for sale)
Sekuru’s Stories (historical perspectives, stories, audio clips)
Berliner, Paul. The Soul of Mbira. University of Chicago Press, 1978. (Academic treatment of Shona mbira culture and musical analysis)