Mbira Music / Musics : Structures and Processes

This book presents a collection of special studies focussing on some of the many typologically and genetically interrelated lamellophones and the respective web of musical idioms and "dialects" whose historically dynamic distribution covers the vast south-central African area of what are now the Shona-speaking parts of Zimbabwe and adjacent areas in Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, and South Africa. Besides deepening specific aspects of and exploring amazing new developments branching out from the already well-documented Zezuru mbira dzavadzimu and the Kwanongoma Colleges, now widespread, schools version of the karimba, these studies also highlight some of the previously underrepresented members of the south-central African lamellophone family such as the Tonga kankobela, the Lala kankobele, the Korekore and Sena-Nyungwe matepe, and the particularly variable and idiosyncratic Ndau mbira dza-VaNdau. Special emphasis is laid on in-depth analyses of the intricately systemic nexus between their organology, their playing techniques and the cognitive dimension, aesthetics, function and symbolism of their respective musical repertoires, as well as on the "biology" of those repertoires as embodied knowledge transmitted aurally/visually within dynamic networks of players. Significant recent innovations which are analyzed here include the extension, hybridization and triple-combination of different tuning plans into a single large-ambitus solo instrument, the emergence of, again large-ambitus, "mbira orchestras" created by means of a staggered extension and modally shifted reorganization of the traditional ensemble structure and musical material (however, at the cost of blurring the identity of individual pieces and undermining their religious function), as well as perhaps the utmost possible extension of improvisational spaces within the otherwise unchallenged grammatical framework of an individual mbira piece. The present volume pools contributions of fourteen African, American and European scholars and musicians from Zimbabwe, South Africa, the United States, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany. An extensive collection of audio, video and graphic companion material is provided online. The editor is a lecturer at the Department of Musicology and the curator of the Collection of Musical Instruments at the University of Göttingen, Germany.ingen, Germany.