Muchatera Mujuru

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Muchatera Mujuru was a Zimbabwean musician from Dewedzo in Manicaland, near the border with Mozambique. He played the mbira, the traditional instrument of the Shona people, an instrument with metal tines that you play with the thumbs. In the Shona tradition he was also a medium for Chaminuka, one of the most important ancestral spirits in the Shona worldview. His music therefore belonged to ceremonies in which ancestors are invoked.

Music and breakthrough

He is best known as the teacher of his grandson Ephat Mujuru (1950 to 2001), who is considered one of the best mbira players of the twentieth century. Ephat learned to play the mbira from him and gave his first ceremony at the age of ten. When Ephat's Catholic school said that playing the mbira was a sin against God, Muchatera took his grandson out of school. Ephat later learned from other masters too, Mubayiwa Bandambira and Simon Mashoko, and so followed the path of Muchatera.

Influence

Few recordings of Muchatera himself are known, and we find him mainly in the story of his grandson. He shows how in Zimbabwe the mbira was passed on from generation to generation, from grandfather to grandson, as oral knowledge and as a practice.

Listening