chimurenga, Zimbabwean popular music that delivers messages of social and political protest through an amalgam of Western popular styles and assorted musics of southeastern Africa—particularly those featuring the Shona mbira (thumb piano). With a Shona name that translates variously as “collective fight,” “struggle,” “uprising,” or “liberation war,” chimurenga music played a key role in rallying rural populations against the white-minority government during the struggle for black-majority rule during the 1960s and ’70s.
From its earliest days, chimurenga music has for black Zimbaweans been emblematic of nationalist sentiment—an icon of the strength, integrity, and modernity of black tradition. Creation of the style is generally credited to Shona musician and political activist Thomas Mapfumo, who spent the first decade of his childhood surrounded by traditional music in rural Southern Rhodesia (the British colony that would become Zimbabwe) and the bulk of his school years playing in an array of rock bands in Salisbury (now Harare), the capital city. By the time he was in his mid-20s, in the late 1960s, Mapfumo and the majority of black Zimbabweans were entwined in an escalating conflict with the white-minority government of the new, albeit unilaterally declared, independent Rhodesia. This political climate inspired Mapfumo to search for a new musical expression of Shona ideals and identity. Working from a rock-band foundation (electric lead and rhythm guitars, bass, and drum set), he subsequently made a series of linguistic, textual, and structural modifications to the music that ultimately became the hallmarks of chimurenga.
In the early 1970s, Mapfumo formed the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band. Among his first and most significant initiatives with the group was to change the language of the songs from English, which was associated with the white-minority administration, to Shona, which was spoken by the majority of the country’s black population. While intended to cultivate a sense of cultural pride within black Rhodesia, this shift also sent a message of defiance to the government, which had long devalued the local language. Mapfumo further strengthened the connection of his music to black Rhodesia by tapping melodies from traditional repertoire and incorporating the characteristic yodel of Shona singing into his delivery. The texts of the new songs, moreover, addressed rural unrest and the shortcomings of the administration—sometimes blatantly but at other times subtly, under a cloak of metaphor and allusion.
Again drawing from his experience with Shona traditional music, Mapfumo overhauled his group’s instrumental component. Now played with a percussive technique, the guitars were made to imitate the rippling, interlocking melodies of the mbira—specifically, those of the mbira dzavadzimu, the instrument used to summon the Shona ancestral spirits. The drum rhythms, meanwhile, evoked the stamping of Shona dancers’ feet, and the cymbals replicated the pulse of the hosho, the gourd rattle that provides a foundational rhythm and regulates the tempo for the mbira in traditional performance. For Mapfumo and his audiences, creation of this new style of popular music represented both a break from the colonial past and a source of empowerment.
By the mid-1970s Mapfumo had dubbed his music chimurenga (in reference to the struggle against the white-minority government), and the style had eclipsed all other popular musics in Rhodesia; it had also become a vibrant symbol of black cultural solidarity. Other artists, most notably Oliver Mtukudzi and Comrade Chinx (Dickson Chingaira), began performing their own versions of chimurenga. Mtukudzi enriched his sound with elements of reggae, jazz, mbira, and various African popular musics, including Rhodesian jit and South African mbaqanga, both of which featured quick-paced rippling melodies of electric guitars. His song texts generally focused on family matters and moral issues. Comrade Chinx, an established choir leader, used melodies from traditional vocal repertoire, with new lyrics supporting the fight of liberation. Meanwhile, Mapfumo pursued his work with a new band, the Acid Band, which he formed in 1976. As the music grew in popularity, the Rhodesian government recognized the music as a serious threat to its authority. Much chimurenga was censored, if not banned, and Mapfumo was imprisoned for several months in 1977. After his release, however, he continued his musical fight for freedom, fronting yet a new band, the Blacks Unlimited (formed in 1978), which remained a standard-bearer of chimurenga music into the 21st century.
The country of Zimbabwe was officially granted independence from Britain in 1980, thanks in no small measure to the spirit of liberation fostered by chimurenga music. With the installation of a new administration under black nationalist Robert Mugabe, the chimurenga frenzy subsided somewhat. The music, however, continued to develop. Mapfumo incorporated actual mbiras and hoshos into his band to give it a more traditional sound while creating a number of new songs in praise of the government. Comrade Chinx and others similarly used their music to voice support of the government policies.
By the late 1980s, however, many Zimbabweans had become disenchanted with the new regime, which had not lived up to its promises and had proved to be fraught with corruption (related largely to the issue of land redistribution). This triggered a resurgence of and divergence in chimurenga, as some musicians produced material in support of the government while others wrote songs that criticized it. Comrade Chinx, most notably, aligned with the administration, performing a type of officially sanctioned chimurenga. Although Mtukudzi’s stand was less obvious, he was nonetheless perceived by many to be on the side of the government, since his songs did not speak directly against it. Meanwhile, Simon Chimbetu, a rising star of Zimbabwean popular music, in the early 1990s promoted a new style of chimurenga based on an East African popular-music style known as sungura; aimed at nurturing a sense of pan-African struggle against the neocolonial intentions of the Western world, Chimbetu’s music also was widely interpreted as congruent with the government’s agenda. By contrast, many musicians used their chimurenga to deliver harsh criticism of Mugabe and his policies. Mapfumo himself was among the regime’s most popular and prominent detractors. Frequent confrontations with government authorities ultimately led Mapfumo in 2000 to settle in the United States, where he continued to produce incendiary chimurenga that enjoyed a strong following—but was often banned—in Zimbabwe.
In the early 21st century, chimurenga music remained popular, political, and stylistically diverse. The meaning of the term chimurenga, however, had fragmented. For many Zimbabweans, the scope of chimurenga was limited to the songs of the liberation movement and, particularly, to the style created by Mapfumo. For others, chimurenga designated a wide spectrum of protest music that had roots in local music traditions. For yet others, the term applied more broadly to any song that addressed the struggle for liberation or the current political scene in Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, the various mbira-influenced popular musics (including some chimurenga) that had arisen since the late 20th century were often called simply mbira.