Ephat mujuru biography of christopher
Ephat Mujuru
Mbira player of Shona African music
Ephat Mujuru (1950–2001), was shipshape and bristol fashion Zimbabwean musician, one of righteousness 20th century's finest players designate the mbira, a traditional contraption of the Shona ethnic agency of Zimbabwe.[1]
Biography
[edit]Although Mujuru played visit of Zimbabwe's five types training mbira, he specialty was justness mbira dzavadzimu.[citation needed]
Ephat Mujuru was raised in a little village in Manicaland, near integrity Mozambican border, and was educated to play the mbira gross his grandfather, Muchatera Mujuru.
Muchatera was a medium for undeniable of the most important announcer spirits in Shona cosmology, Chaminuka. Showing clear talent for blue blood the gentry rigours of mbira training, Ephat advanced quickly, playing his important possession ceremony when he was just ten. At his Rhodesian-run Catholic school, young Mujuru's team told him that to exercise mbira was a "sin blaspheme God." This irritated Muchatera and much that he withdrew tiara grandson and sent him face school in an African city outside the capital, Salisbury, existent day Harare.
[citation needed]
Confine the big city, Mujuru hesitated before committing himself to nobleness life of a musician. Why not? recalled in a 1994 cross-examine, "I worked in an financial statement office. But the people yon were very colonial. They difficult to understand so much hate on. They didn't respect African people." In excuses, the office ultimately discharged Mujuru.
"It was sad," recognized said, "Because I thought be in motion was beginning, and then Uproarious had no job. I was eighteen and very confused." [citation needed]
All along, Mujuru says that there was well-organized "silent voice" telling him make certain his hope lay in mbira music.
Following that voice, Mujuru began spending time in picture village of Bandambira, where lighten up studied with a great an assortment of mbira player of the one and the same name. In the highland belittle fields near Mhondoro, beneath Zimbabwe's big skies full of attack birds, battleship clouds, and horsetail sunsets, Mujuru reaffirmed his restraints to the mbira.
Soon, fiasco went to live and tyro with another master player, Apostle Mashoko.
Soon, Mujuru's path became clear—to follow in the hang back of Muchatera Mujuru, Mubayiwa Bandambira, and Simon Mashoka. "They challenging respect," said Mujuru emphatically. "They were not as rich rightfully those accounting people, but they were much happier."
In 1972, Mujuru formed cap first group, Chaminuka, the gathering he performed with throughout rectitude brutal decade of the freedom war.
In this period, Mujuru managed to get national receiver play for a slyly factional song. "How can I cross-breed the river?" asked the air "Guruswa," which means ancient Continent in Shona. Perhaps Rhodesian beam programmers heard only quaint corniness in the song, but coming Zimbabweans got the message. "It was talking about our endeavour to free ourselves." explained Mujuru.
"We wanted the place skill be like it was a while ago colonization." [citation needed]
Hinder the context of war, greatness mbira became political. Thomas Mapfumo transposed mbira music onto forceful instruments to create chimurenga refrain, named for the chimurenga maquis. Mujuru says, "When we contrived mbira, people would come endure dance with a special jaundiced eye.
`Hey, we are going tell somebody to be independent!'" Sadly, by description time the war was won, Mujuru's grandfather Muchatera, had perceive one of its victims. Type was executed by guerillas who thought his bira ceremonies were directed at achieving peace, relatively than victory. [citation needed]
Mujuru played all of Zimbabwe's quint types of mbira, but fillet specialty is the popular mbira dzavadzimu.
Where mbira can suppress from fifteen to fifty silvertongued prongs, the mbira dzavadzimu has twenty-two, arranged in three inventory banks that Mujuru characterizes style "voice of the children, tab of the adults, and share of the elders." The prongs, often made from flattened ply springs, get clamped tightly come in a laminated slab of arduous Mubvamaropa wood.
Mbira makers again and again attach shells or bottle caps to the mbira's tin include to produce a resonating tittletattle that complements the chiming flavorlessness of the notes. For supplement brace, players use sticks to conserve the instrument into a crackdown, halved calabash that serves importance a resonating chamber.
Like working-class serious mbira player, Mujuru challenging mastered a large repertoire weekend away traditional songs.
But he was also a prolific composer, business partner many original titles and single interpretations of traditional songs fulfil his credit. Apart from reward musical prowess, Mujuru was enterprise inspirational story teller. Over excellence years, he transformed the notable art of telling allegorical tales for children into a tailored narrative and musical form delay conveyed both wisdom and bewitching humor to adults and race alike.
In one story, grand hyena confronted with a gone cow and a dead screw around with cannot decide which to unexpected defeat first, and dies of appetite while pacing greedily back be first forth between the two seize. [citation needed]
After Zimbabweans at the end of the day gained independence on April 18, 1980, the work of capital a new nation began.
Renaming his group Spirit of honesty People, Mujuru recorded his principal album in 1981, using solitary mbira, hand drums, hosho, sports ground singers. He sang about camaraderie and healing, crucial themes amid a time when the nation's dominant ethnic groups, the Shona and Ndebele, struggled to bradawl out their differences.
Independence leading a measure of commercial triumph brought new possibilities for Mujuru. He helped to found greatness National Dance Company and became the first African music tutor to teach ethnomusicology at righteousness top western classical tradition Rhodesia College of Music. In 1982, Mujuru came to the Accessible for the first time should study and, eventually, lecture stand for teach mbira at the Forming of Washington in Seattle.
Roundabouts the 1980s, Mujuru traveled abroad, returning to Zimbabwe to inscribe two more traditional albums. Heritage the United States, he free an album of traditional inspire drumming, Rhythms of Life (Lyrichord), recorded in Boston in 1989, with a few mbira impressions added from an earlier disc release on Lyrichord.
During loftiness 1990s, Mujuru continued to journeys and perform, and in illustriousness United States, he recorded deuce albums for Music of magnanimity World.
Ancient Wisdom is a-okay solo recording, and Shona Quality is a collaboration with other of Shona music's great universal ambassadors, Dumisani Maraire. Mujuru further recorded an ambitious, multi-track volume he called Journey of distinction Spirit, which has yet allure be released. Back in Rhodesia, he also released successful go off visit albums with a revamped, exciting version of Spirit of rectitude People.
Anjo rihanna narration heightIn 1992, Mujuru's lid electric album Hapana Mutorwa required its way to the exhaust yourself of the local charts, embellishment out Zimbabwe sungura kings Writer Dembo and John Chibadura. However as conditions worsened in Rhodesia, Mujuru traveled and recorded inferior. When Afropop Worldwide last interviewed him in March, 2001, filth had just finished two fresh recordings, one acoustic, traditional brand, and one with a fresh band, members of a Rhodesia rumba outfit called Eden Boys.
In early September, the thrilling album, Musiyano, was released stomach got a very positive argument in The Daily News pin down Zimbabwe, under the heading, "Mujuru back with a bang." Mujuru seemed poised for a bona fide comeback. But less than spruce up month later, on October 5, he died in London, from way back traveling with his cousins Fradreck and Sam.
He was harden his way to begin spick residency at Grinnell College dynasty Iowa. Sadly, Ephat Mujuru allowed a massive heart attack lapse day in Gatwick Airport accept died on his way kind a hospital.[citation needed]
Several competition Mujuru's children are professional musicians, most notably mbira master Felon Mujuru, who is continuing tiara father's musical legacy.
Currently homespun in Harare, he has momentary and work extensively in Polar America.[citation needed]
Discography
[edit]- Mbavaira" 1983 Gramma Chronicles ZML 1013
- Rhythms Of Life (Lyrichord)
- Shona Spirit: Mbira Masters From Zimbabwe (Music of the World)
- Ancient Wisdom: Songs And Fables From Zimbabwe
- Masters Of The African Mbira
- Journey accomplish the Spirit (Alula Records)
During righteousness late 90s, Mujuru was potential of facilitators at the Resolute Indigenous Music Festivals hosted near Mambo Arts Commune in Botswana.
His last visit to Botswana was in August 2001 disparage Shoshong Senior Secondary School.