Embracing mbira innovation

26 Nov, 2014 - 09:11 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

Our communities are never stagnant — they are perpetually on the march, changing due to internal and external influences. Surely that change in society should be reflected at the level of the mbira — in terms of structural design, modes of manufacture, instrument playing traditions, the music and lyrics and indeed, the way people dance to mbira music. To do otherwise is to negate the natural march of development and change.

Even those pieces of mbira musical instruments reserved for spiritual functions have not been spared changes. This is as expected. The ancestral spirits do not belong to a fossilised world. What we need to appreciate is the relationship between spirit and material. According to the traditional worldview of the African people, a person has two components — material and spirit. It is the living human who is the recipient of and cause for change within the secular realm.

A number of artefacts are introduced within this domain before migration to the spiritual domain. It is critical that we understand the essence of African spirituality. We choose the term African spirituality rather than African Traditional Religion (ATR) as the former better encapsulates and identifies the African spiritual essence and reality. The spirit is at the centre of African Religion.

Even before the acquisition and use of artefacts, there was this essence of African spirituality. This was identified as the two way communication system between the living and the dead characterised by an ascending hierarchy with God at the apex. All that is important is the word (Message), verbalised or uttered silently. The God-bound messages are received; processed responses sent back — hence the essential two-way communication system.

From this essence there have been added trappings of religion or spirituality that we today think are the essentials of spirituality. Tobacco is regarded as essential to ancestral propitiation — and yet we do know tobacco was introduced by the Portuguese and the Shona word for tobacco (fodya) is of Portuguese origins. Similarly, beer is now perceived to be integral to ancestral propitiation. Again, African spirituality preceded the knowledge of beer brewing.

Glass beads are similarly associated with ancestral paraphernalia. But history tells us glass beads were trade items obtained from the Arab, Swahili and later Portuguese traders at the East African Coast. We could go on and on and include what we think are ancestral amalembu/machira (calico) such as retso (red, black and white) which were also trade goods that were exchanged for ivory, gold and other items from the African interior.

What we should appreciate here is that all these items were used by ordinary secular people usually as items of adornment or as narcotics and beverages.

Then they were, just like the mbira itself, items belonging to the secular domain and used by people with no spiritual endowment. Then upon death the material component of a human body was interred while the spirit lived on.

It is the spiritual being or personality who demanded his/her material items that were used by the secular person before material and spirit separated.

The ancestral spirit, having had a material component, demands the material goods used in material life. This is the time when what used to be material goods/artefacts become spiritual items. They are now sacred and kept and/or used in a manner that retains their sacredness and holiness. Suppose the phenomenon of spiritual regeneration continues in the present, what new items would enter the spiritual domain?

Clearly, a spirit will demand his gun if he was a soldier, his Bible if he was a Christian. Yours truly would certainly demand his laptop as he lives by writing.

My laptop would then enter the spiritual domain and acquire sacredness. Here lies the dynamism in African spirituality if not interfered with by foreign religions!

Giving life to a Mbira: Embracing change and innovation

The emphasis of this article is to bring to the fore the pitfall or dangers that the mbira will fall into if blindly confined to the spiritual realm. Here we shall look at globalization and its impact on certain cultures and world-views.

The information and communication technologies have brought the world together in what is generally known as a global village. We do know from lived experience that a village has a village head or chief and a dominant village culture.

Sadly, not all of the world’s cultures will make equal contributions to the village’s culture. Certainly, African culture will not feature prominently on the global village.

African culture, in all its manifestations and ramifications is a culture under sustained and severe onslaught. The more powerful religions of the world are undercutting and undermining it. African world-views, values, principles, philosophies, cosmologies and beliefs are being constantly eroded.

Seemingly Africans have neither the will nor the know-how to stand up to the global onslaught on their culture. Africans are a people with neither a proud identity nor the will power to defend what is their own.

In fact, they measure development in terms of how successfully they abandon their own cultures including traditional music and the traditional musical instruments. With a past and culture that were denigrated and scandalised, they have willingly fallen into the trap of going out of their way to seek, appropriate and practice other people’s cultures.

Their spirituality in particular has received the hardest knock. If the mbira is to be confined to the spiritual realm as a sacred musical instrument it will go down into cultural oblivion together with African spirituality. It is, therefore, foolhardy to lend spirited assistance to the extinction of the mbira.

We ought to be drawing a leaf from the innovative Chinese who are taking measures to ensure that their own culture becomes an integral part of the global culture. In our situation that would translate into going beyond keeping the mbira within the sacred domain. Let it remain ensconced there where it will not make an impact on the world musical scene.

However, the best way to safeguard it is to set it free and allow it to join other musical instruments of the world. It should be part and parcel of orchestral ensembles that make it in the global village. It is certain that enterprising people from overseas will appropriate the mbira and popularise it to a point that they will even patent it as their own.

All Zimbabwe will claim is historical origin of the mbira. At the local level the mbira should enter the secular entertainment world where it will be played by several artistes with no connection with the spiritual world.

In terms of manufacture, there is nothing unholy or profane about producing the mbira according to modern production methods.

To Be Continued

 

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