A new book, Lion Songs, probes the life and times of Thomas Mapfumo, Zimbabwe’s hailed chimurenga music pioneer, writes Kwanele Sosibo.
Lion Songs (Duke University Press), Banning Eyre’s biography of Zimbabwean musical innovator Thomas Tafirenyika Mapfumo, is an intensely detailed and lucid work. Eyre, a guitar-playing journalist, is also the author of Griot Time: An American Guitarist in Mali and producer of Afropop Worldwide, a New York radio show that is broadcast around the globe.
Eyre, who played with Mapfumo’s band, the Blacks Unlimited, in the United States, first interviewed the artist in 1988. The book was about 15 years in the making, with some chapters written as long ago as 2001.
Eyre is a musicologist, so when he explains the musical alchemy that went into creating Mapfumo’s mbira-inspired chimurenga (revolutionary struggle) music, his descriptions are illuminating and technical. He also understands that the significance of his subject – a fixture in Zimbabwe’s music and sociopolitical fabric for at least five decades – transcends the music he made.
Lion Songs: Thomas Mapfumo and the Music That Made Zimbabwe. Author:Banning Eyre Published: 2015 Duke University Press
For full review, see Mail & Guardian
