January 20, 2008

With a heavy heart, we write to announce the passing of Mr. Hakurotwi Mude this past week in Zimbabwe at the age of 72. Mr. Mude was the leader of, and featured singer with, the renowned mbira ensemble, Mhuri yekwaRwizi. His exceptional voice, his command over wide-ranging vocal styles, his imaginative improvisations, and the extraordinary power of his expression were “gifts from God,” as his ensemble members attested. Mr. Mude is featured on the Nonesuch CDS Zimbabwe: The Soul of Mbira and Zimbabwe: Shona Mbira Music. He will be long remembered and remembered well by all those whose lives he touched.

Paul Berliner and Cosmas Magaya

This is sad news indeed.  Afropop Worldwide has a special feeling for Mr. Mude as he welcomed us into his home in January 1988, during our very first visit to Zimbabwe, to attend a bira, a spirit ceremony.  The late mbira maestro Ephat Mujuru accompanied Sean Barlow and I to the event.  Below is an excerpt from the manuscript of my upcoming book about Thomas Mapfumo.  The passage describes that magical night at Mr. Mude’s house, and we offer it now in his memory. 

Banning Eyre

When Hakurotwi Mude was a boy in Mhondoro in the early ‘40s, he had problems at school, “traditional problems.”  He often felt ill in the classroom, and asked the teacher to excuse him.  “My dogs would be sitting outside,” Mude recalled, “and on the way home, we would go hunting.  The moment I got home, I would be fit.  Eventually I decided maybe school wasn’t for me.”  Mude moved to the capital to work, and began to play mbira, and also sing magnificently.  He became a spirit medium.  Mude named his group Mhuri Yekwa Rwizi after his uncle, a Rwizi chief.  In high demand for recordings and ceremonies, this group attracted some of the best mbira players in the city, leaving Mude free to sing.  One of those mbira players, Cosmas Magaya, recalled Mude’s toughness.  “Some elders thought they were very good in playing mbira,” said Cosmas.  “But then, if they did not do it well, Mude would say, ‘You, out.  You, come in.’  That competition made us good.” 

We told Ephat we wanted to greet the spirits, so he took us to his “Uncle Mude’s” house in Highfield.  The wooden homes on Harkurotwi Mude’s rutted, dirt street were close together, not shacks, but shabby with peeling paint, the odd boarded-up window, dilapidated fences and overgrown weeds.  Music had already begun as invitees entered the front room, its only furnishings wooden chairs, a bench, and an old, white Frigidaire, against which another three mbira players leaned as they played, seated on a straw matt.  The concrete floor produced a dull slap when a bare, dancing foot landed on it with just the right angle and intensity. 

The loudest sound was the hosho, played by two boys standing in the doorway to the kitchen.  Their left hands snapped upward to punch out the basic beat—1, 2, 3, 4—while their right hands rolled to the side in answer—and-ah, and-ah, and-ah, and-ah.  Beneath to the hoshos’ cracking triplets, the mbiras in their dezes produced a dense, bubbling, metallic texture—ambient and audible, but difficult to discern as any particular melody.  With some ten dancers crowding together, the smell of sweat mingled with other vague odors:  food cooked some hours ago, white gas, and a large urn of “seven-days” millet beer, about to be served. 

A stout, grave man in a dark blue shirt and gray slacks appeared in the kitchen doorway.  Mude surveyed the scene, his long, weathered face and faintly bloodshot eyes at odds with the mirth before him.  He took his place next to the mbira players.  Was it really okay to photograph and record, we asked?  “Yes,” Ephat said emphatically.  “Except when the spirit comes.”

Soon the mbira players rotated and Ephat joined them on the floor.  Mude began to sing, quietly at first, humming along with the mbiras.  Mude called to the kitchen for the beer, and a man carried in a large, clay urn containing the brew, an essential component at any bira.  Seven-days millet beer is milky, frothy, yeasty, sweet, tart, very slightly carbonated, and served at room temperature.  In this case, a man with a ladle filled a large, porcelain cup, which was passed around the room.  Some sipped, others guzzled.  One man drained the full cup in a single gulp, then passed it back to the server.  When beer spilled on the floor, Mude snapped his fingers and a small boy appeared with a tub of black dirt to sprinkle over the spill.  The beer serving man trampled the moist dirt, and the boy returned with a grass brush and pan to collect it. 

The music intensified, and mbira players reached for a white powder to ward off blistering on thumbs and fingers.  Without warning, Mude opened his mouth and released a horn-like blast that overpowered even the hoshos before undulating into soft unison with the lead mbira.  His singing continued that way, sometimes tearing forth in convulsions of broken, yodeling melody—the style called huro—then burrowing down with gentle, rhythmic mahon’era chants, sometimes mere mumbles and whispers.  A woman ululated, her tongue racing back and forth across her upper lip.  Barefoot dancers drove their heels into the concrete, thudding out counter rhythms.  Song after song, the celebrants drew together.  They might have been Sufis singing the name of Allah, or Pentecostals rocking in unison, edging toward collective ecstasy. 

Suddenly, a young woman began to jitter.  She fell to her hands and knees, and with her whole body shaking, crawled slowly backwards toward the kitchen doorway.  The music crested and began to soften.  Mude stopped singing, his clouded eyes fixed on the woman.  The spirit had come. 

Everyone sat down.  The hoshos stopped playing, and the mbiras dwindled to mere tinkling.  People began to clap in slow, soft unison, their cupped hands coming together like mirror images, as in the Shona greeting custom.  Another clay urn filled with millet beer was brought in, and the white cup continued to circulate.  Mude had drunk none of the beer, but now he had his shirt off, and sat perfectly still, growling ominously.  One of the dancers put a black cloth over the medium’s head covering his body and draping to the floor.  His head hidden, Mude slapped his upper arm against his bare side, the convulsive movement a clear sign of possession.  A young man brought him a bowl of water, and Mude let the cloth slip away as he reached for it.  He lifted the water to his lips, drank, then spat out suddenly, spraying people near him, including the trousers of a white-haired man.  One door leading to an adjacent room had mostly remained closed.  Now a man emerged through it with a long, wooden ladle for the water, and also a cloth sack, which he handed to the white-haired man.  The white-haired man reached in and pulled out garments with which to dress the quivering woman, first a black ostrich-feather headdress, then a black and white robe, and finally, a short, wooden staff.   

The woman slid forward toward Mude who handed her a wooden snuff flask.  She poured fine, brown powdered tobacco, bute, into the palm of her hand, took a pinch in her fingers and snorted it, feeding her closed-eyed rapture.  Mude ladled water from the bowl onto his bare back.  There was no music now, just a tense silence, broken occasionally by soft, rhythmic clapping.  Mude began to converse with the woman—hushed, monotone utterances separated by silence.  The woman reached into her gown for a leather scabbard and produced a 12-inch carving knife.  She caressed it, then placed its point against her chest and released a low, bird-like whistle.  The knife did not penetrate, but she held it there for a long time before suddenly withdrawing it and laughing.  The closed door opened and a boy appeared with a small drum. 

Mosquitoes moved in the dank, still air, but when I opened a bottle of insect repellant, Ephat flashed me a startled glare.  “The perfume!” he whispered.  “Not now.  The spirit is greeting you.”  Spirits, especially ancient ones, want nothing to do with Western things, and odors are especially offensive to them.  Mude was intoning words in a deep, quiet voice, his eyes still trained on the possessed woman, who appeared to be sleeping.  One mbira player leaned close to another, playing almost inaudibly, apparently teaching him a song.  “This is the discussion,” said Ephat.  “Now, the spirit is saying that we should take off our shoes.”  There was a shuffling in the room as some thirty people obeyed, adding a rank edge to the room’s sweaty bouquet. 

First published: afropop.org