When CHIPAWO staff and arts educators went to the funeral wake for
Chiwoniso Maraire at her home in the Bluff Hill area of Harare, they paid their
tribute to the mbira legend with a short performance of music and dance. This
was a special tribute to Chiwoniso who became a member of CHIPAWO Youth Group
briefly in the early 90s when she had already mastered from her father and mother
the art of playing marimba and mbira and had already perfected her singing like
someone who had spent many years as a professional performing arts
practitioner.
The CHIPAWO tribute with music and dance was also rendered as recognition
of Chiwoniso’s understanding of the importance of intergenerational
transmission of performing arts heritage by ensuring that her children
participated in performing arts education programmes that sharpen their
inherently inborn talent. Chiwoniso made sure that her daughter Chiedza was
enrolled into CHIPAWO arts education for development programme at Masaisai
School’s CHIPAWO Centre where she was under the tutorship a traditional dance
master, Enock Majeza, who performed a shangara dance to “nhemamusasa”
mbira song at the funeral as a member of the CHIPAWO group that performed the
classic “nhemamusasa” made popular by Chiwoniso, as well as amabhiza and
mbakumba dances and CHIPAWO songs.
Chiwoniso in her short but rich musical career became an epitome of
national cultural heritage itself. She performed the most distinctive
performing arts heritage of the Shona people clearly as a disciplined and
appointed custodian of a mbira heritage with a mature handling of its intricate
spiritual elements while projecting an incredibly elderly respect of the
essential aesthetics of mbira where the impact of her creative genius was ever
evident.
Chiwoniso was a consistent messenger of her late father, Dr. Dumi
Maraire’s passion and respect for mbira as one of the most significant symbol
of our indigenous creativity. When the late Dumi Maraire returned home from the
United States of America, he joined the then Ministry of Youth Sports and
Culture, as my deputy in the Department of Arts and Crafts with a
responsibility of promoting the performing arts industry. In his mbira
promotion workshops with cultural officers in the ministry, Dumi Maraire
advocated for Zimbabweans to take mbira music and instrument as a unique
cultural heritage that would be a major identifying characteristic of
Zimbabwe’s music industry.
In her stage performances, Chiwoniso not only cherished her late father’s
passion for mbira music but also his respect for that cultural heritage which
she rejuvenated using English, in many
cases, in order to accommodate a wider audience base while consistently echoing
the feeling of indigenous mbira sounds. The many young Zimbabwean musicians who
have appreciated the lucrative potential in the mbira music renaissance are a
vivid representation of the repository of the benefits of Chiwoniso’s passion
for mbira and her versatile adoption of that traditional music genre into a
viable cultural industry product that remains emblematic of our rich cultural
heritage.
It is very easy to take it for granted that Chiwoniso’s father, the late
Dumi Maraire, Thomas Mapfumo, Stella Chiweshe, the late Sekuru Gora, Oliver
Mtukudzi and David Gweshe, just to mention a few, as elderly musicians would
naturally romance mbira music, but when a young person with western education becomes
a robust exponent of our traditions entrenched in mbira aesthetics, we marvel
at the rarity of such ingenious youth. Chiwoniso was an embodiment of that ingenious
youth that possess abundant knowledge and value of a cultural heritage
bequeathed to them. Chiwoniso became one
of the most respected custodians of the mbira music genre, on one hand and a
consistent promoter of the cultural heritage she was safeguarding, on the other
hand.
Chiwoniso demonstrated how a
singing voice that is well grounded in uniquely indigenous vocal texture and
potency can be innovatively utilized to
rend songs in English or other foreign languages and musical instruments to
produce a clearly identifiable Zimbabwean sound that remains authentic even
when handled with a creativity that
benefitted from wide contacts with other
music of the world.
She was a great composer who created meaningful music and songs that
carried the message that was intended to be articulated by feature films such
as Everyone’s Child and More Time and documentaries made
Zimbabwean film makers. It is the intelligence and maturity which she projected
in her composition which seemed as if produced by a person who spent many years
at colleges, academies or universities of music.
Chiwoniso was a brilliant analyst of mbira music, its cultural and
historical context and its uniqueness as a most expressive art of the spiritual
dimensions of our performing arts heritage. In her speeches about mbira music
and the mbira instrument, she exhibited an incredibly rich knowledge of its
functions and value in the traditional Shona society as well as what mbira
music meant to her and what role she was playing in promoting its mastery and
processes of safeguarding that cultural heritage. She was a gifted music educator whose major
strength was her ability to demonstrate accurately, the skills to be acquired.
As a master who had benefitted from observing her father and mother as a member
of Mhuri yekwaMaraire, she appreciated the value of clarity in demonstrating a
performing arts skill.
Chiwoniso was a well-briefed, obedient and eloquent ambassador of
Zimbabwean culture in general and of mbira music in particular, to many
countries where she participated in numerous cultural festivals, arts workshops
and in music collaborations with musicians of diverse musical backgrounds.
Having listened for five days to several messages of condolence from
both the young and the old, which were conveyed on our six radio stations and
different social media and contained in several articles in all our newspapers,
there is no doubt that all these were vivid and passionate expressions of the
fact that Chiwoniso Maraire was a hero of our ongoing struggle for continued
respect for and viable exploitation of our rich diversity of cultural
expressions.
Cultural legends of this quality are celebrated not just for the value
of what they have created but also for leaving behind works that will for
generations show the way. Chiwoniso has effectively played her cultural heritage
promotion role. She leaves us with the task of continuing where she has left.
May her soul rest in peace.
Feedback:Stephen.chifunyise@gmail.com
