IN an effort to appreciate the origins of local traditional music, organisers of the annual Zimbabwe Music Festival Mbira (Zimfebi) have gone rural.
WINSTONE ANTONIO
Villagers in Guruve, Mashonaland Central Province, will be in for a treat as Chatiza Village has been chosen as one of the venues to host this year’s edition of the week-long fiesta.
“Traditional music reflects the culture of a country and as a way of giving Zimfebi its value, we have decided to take it to Chatiza Village in Guruve,” organiser of the event Luckson Chikutu, aka Manluckerz, said.
“Guruve is well known for promoting contemporary African art like Shona sculpture, with the most extensive collection of authentic original art and sculpture.”
Manluckerz said the festival, which seeks to promote local traditional cultural heritage and bring people together from different parts of the world through music, would commence with a workshop at Book Café.
“We are officially opening the festival in Harare with a workshop at Book Café meant to train artistes to market themselves in this technological era which requires them to be well equipped with different skills in order to spread their music far and wide through Internet,” he said.
“Our second workshop will be held on August 7 at the Zimbabwe College of Music.”
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Manluckerz said as part of the music workshops, local artistes would be trained in how to package their works in a modern way as well as how to start their own websites and blogs so that they could market their music on the Internet.
Meanwhile, nine of the Swedish artistes arrived in the country last week together with the Sweden-based Manluckerz.
The remaining six Swedish artistes are expected in the country on Friday ahead of the fiesta that will run from August 5 to 9.
An array of local artistes, among them mbira group Mawungira eNharira and Ambuya VaJestina Madhinga, will partner Manluckerz and his outfit, The Zim-Traditional Unity, made up of Zimbabweans, a Ugandan, Mozambicans and Swedes and other nationalities to perform at the festival.
After Zimbabwe, the second part of the festival will be held in Stockholm, Sweden, in September.
