Preface -- Introduction -- Part A. Components of the Mbira System -- Collecting ideas in an improvisation-based tradition : A longitudinal approach -- The mbira repertory : Central concepts -- ...

Listeners who come to traditional African music from the American variety will find it a refreshingly organic experience. The sonorities reflect a variety of instruments both ancient and modern, ...

Today’s Google Doodle focuses on the mbira instrument. Google Today’s doodle is also accompanied by a game wherein the user can “play” the mbira using their laptop or handheld device. Over hundreds of ...

From the first pluck of the mbira’s metal keys, Shumbakdzi commands more than melody as she summons memory, resistance and renewal. Her sound is ancestral yet urgent — a rhythmic conversation between ...

Sometimes it takes an outsider to fully appreciate a culture’s traditions. In 1972 American musician and budding ethnomusicologist Paul Berliner traveled to Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) to study the mbira ...

WILLIAMSTOWN -- When high-ranking Zimbabwean mbira player Forward Kwenda absorbs himself in playing his instrument, the results can be blindingly electric. "Nothing goes through my mind," Kwenda said.

Popularly known by his totem Hungwe, which refers to the fish eagle, Lovemore Salari is an unsung mbira maestro — being a player, maker and trainer of the traditional instrument. Born on August 26, ...

A virtuoso of the mbira, a plucked instrument, he shared his knowledge with the wider world to preserve wisdom handed down orally. He died of Covid-19. By Jon Pareles This obituary is part of a series ...

In the epic narratives and gorgeous elegies of trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith lies a heart immersed in the spirituality of the blues. His music drinks from an ancient well that predates ...