Hip Deep December 14, 2017
Thomas Mapfumo 2: The Mugabe Years
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In recognition of the end of Robert Mugabe's 37-year rule in Zimbabwe, we are rebroadcasting our program on the career of Thomas Mapfumo during the Mugabe years.

Part two of the story of Zimbabwe’s most consequential singer and bandleader picks up at the dawn of the country’s independence in 1980. The program focuses on key songs from Thomas Mapfumo’s vast post-independence catalogue, beginning with his celebration of victory, and his warnings about “dissidents” out to destabilize a young nation struggling for unity. The 1988 song “Corruption” officially opens Mapfumo’s rift with the regime of Robert Mugabe, turning a government financial scandal into a pop culture sensation. 1999’s “Mamvemve” accuses leaders of betraying the promises of the liberation struggle and reducing a rich country to tatters, and 2003’s “Marima Nzara” takes on the government over Zimbabwe’s most prolonged and vexing challenge—reclaiming land stolen from Africans by Rhodesian settlers over a century of colonial rule. In all, this is an amazing saga of a popular singer’s evolution from enthusiastic booster to caustic critic of a young African government.

Zimbabwean historian Mhoze Chikowero contextualizes all these songs with vivid descriptions of the issues and events that Mapfumo’s work both responded to and shaped. At the time this program was recorded, Afropop producer Banning Eyre had been researching a biography of Mapfumo for more than 15 years, and the broadcast draws upon his, and Afropop’s, wealth of archival interviews and rare musical recordings, resulting in a persuasive portrait of a brilliant musical innovator and an under-recognized titan of African post-colonial cultural politics.

Related Audio Programs

Thomas Mapfumo: The War Years
Hip Deep April 11, 2024
Thomas Mapfumo: The War Years
Part 1 of Afropop Worldwide's HIp Deep audio biography of Thomas Mapfumo focuses on his upbringing, musical education and the bands that lead up to the Blacks Unlimited. These are the war years, when Zimbabwe was fighting to throw off the burden of the racist Southern Rhodesian regime. This episode documents the birth of "chimurenga" music in the voices of those who made that history, many of whom have now joined the ancestors. Produced by Banning Eyre.

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