Thomas Mapfumo

Regular readers will know that I've been writing a series of posts for Hii Dunia on African music of late - my post on Mali was, after all, reproduced here just a few days ago. Anyone who enjoyed that, or has an interest in the subject (or the most basic level of politeness, goddamnit!) is welcome to make me feel important by going over to Hii Dunia and reading my latest contribution - a post which purports to be about music and the African exile, but which is really just a potted biography of the excellent Thomas Mapfumo - a wonderful musician who provides a telling counterpoint to the disgraceful Robert Mugabe. In days to come, I'm going to continue with the exile theme, and write about musicians from Sierre Leone and Somalia. Keep your eyes peeled.

Here's the post about Mapfumo - and there's a quick extract below.

Thomas Mapfumo is one of Africa's most important musicians. Born in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) in 1945, he spearheaded the creation of a new musical style, Chimurenga, which updated the traditional Shona music of his nation and mapped it to the contours of rock instrumentation - rather than use thumb pianos for the distinct, chiming cyclical melodies, Mapfumo played electric guitar, and sang, to increasingly political ends, in his native language rather than in English.

Also relevent to this is Dan's post on Africa's Worst Leaders - which actually began life over here on Assistant Blog, but is now up on Hii Dunia too - take a look.