Lion Songs: Thomas Mapfumo and the Music That Made Zimbabwe

ike Fela Kuti and Bob Marley, singer, composer and bandleader Thomas Mapfumo and his music came to represent his native country's anti-colonial struggle and cultural identity. Thomas Mapfumo was born in 1945 in what was then the British colony of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The trajectory of his career--from early performances of American rock n' roll tunes to later creating a new genre based on traditional Zimbabwean music, including the sacred mbira, and African and Western pop--is a metaphor for Zimbabwe's evolution from colony to independent nation. Lion Songs, by Banning Eyre, is an authoritative biography of Mapfumo that narrates the life and career of this creative, complex and iconic figure. Eyre sets Mapfumo's life in the context of Zimbabwe's history. In the 1970s Mapfumo crystallized a new genre called chimurenga, or struggle music. Threatened by Mapfumo's

by : Banning Eyre