Music narrates personal, communal and national experiences. It is a rich repository of a people's deepest fears, hopes, and achievements, especially as it communicates spirituality, economic, and political realities. This volume examines the multiple roles of music in Zimbabwe, showing how Zimbabwean music has addressed the socio-economic, political and spiritual crisis that the country has endured in the last one and a half decades. While concentrating on the tumultuous 2000-2013 period, the themes that are addressed here are enduring. Thus, the book explores the interplay between music and gender, music and politics, and music and identity construction in Zimbabwe, and it interacts with most of the dominant genres in Zimbabwean music, including Sungura, ZORA, Chimurenga, Gospel and the Urban Grooves. This volume will interest specialists in the study of ethnomusicology, in addition to scholars of literature, religious studies, philosophy, theatre arts, political science, and history.
About the Author: Fainos Mangena, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Ethics and Applied Ethics at the University of Zimbabwe. His areas of research interest include ethics and its interactions with business, the environment, education, medicine, culture, gender and politics. He is a winner of the prestigious African Humanities Programme Post-doctoral Fellowship funded by the Carnegie Corporation in America, and is currently the interim President of the Philosophical Society of Zimbabwe (PSZ). His most recent publications include: Can Africana Women truly embrace Ecological Feminism? in Filosofia Theoretica: A Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions, Volume 3, Number 2 (2014) and Restorative Justice's Deep Roots in Africa in the South African Journal of Philosophy, Volume 34, Number 1 (2015). Ezra Chitando, PhD, is a Professor of History and Phenomenology of Religion at the University of Zimbabwe, and also serves as World Council of Churches Theology Consultant on HIV. His research interests include music, religious studies, security studies, gender and politics. His publications include Singing Culture: A Study of Gospel Music in Zimbabwe (2002) and Living with Hope: African Churches and HIV/AIDS, Volume 1 (2007). Itai Muwati, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of African Languages and Literature at the University of Zimbabwe. Professor Muwati is the founder of the University of Zimbabwe Chapter of the International Council of Africana Womanism. He has a particular interest in Afrocentricity, Africana womanism, gender studies, African orature, and comparative studies. He has published several journal articles and edited a number of books. His most recent publications include Resuscitating Zimbabwe's Endangered Languages: Multi-disciplinary Perspectives on Tonga Language, History and Culture (2014) and A Potentially Dystrophic Era: Analysing the Lyrical Sociology of Selected Sungura Songs in Zimbabwe in the 1990s and Beyond in MUZIKI (2013).