Preserving Matepe music
in the 21st century

Every time the team gets a break from recording, they cease the opportunity to put to practice some of the lessons Sekuru Chawasarira would have delivered in previous recordings.

Last week we had the pleasure of welcoming journalist Peter Tanyanyiwa from Harare’s newspaper The Herald for an interview at Sekuru Chawasarira’s place. Read his article online here. In case there are difficulties, I’ve inserted a snapshot below. Some of our statements apparently got mixed up a bit during editing, nevertheless we’re happy about the…

Matepe 21st team Sekuru Chaka Chawasarira, Othnell Mangoma Moyo and Kuda Samora Nyaruwabvu at ZiFM studios in an interview with Patience Musa on Matepe documentation project. Stefan Franke joined the interview from Germany.

After recording Mauya Mauya overdub, sekuru decided to use another Matepe to enrich the rhythm. Samora installs piezos on the Matepe sekuru goes on to use on the overdubs.

James Kamwaza took the time we had with him to show us how he makes his Mbiras. After a long day of fixing the keys and tuning, he took the opportunity to play a few songs with Sekuru, two Matepe masters sharing some lighter moments.

This afternoon we were honoured to have the other seasoned Hera/Matepe maker and master musician James Kanwaza visiting Sekuru’s place. James had left Rushinga already at 3am and brought with him a couple of soundboards and some premade keys which he wanted to finish here.

Today our long-missed project partner Othnell “Mangoma” Moyo arrived, having returned from his US tour yesterday. Of course he couldn’t be stopped from playing matepe with Sekuru. Later on, we started recording Mangoma interviewing Sekuru about his personal and musical biography.

The day started with Samora noticing a strange noises from one block afar, shortly before the power went off. He said he once heard the same sounds when something in a transformer station blew up, and expected us to stay without electricity for a couple of days. Part of our equipment is a little solar…

Today Sekuru finished the matepe. After all keys were in place and tuned, Sekuru took them out one by one to file in the “scars” – decorative grooves on the upper side which also helps to keep the keys in place below the bar. He polished each key with the file and cuts off the…

We spent the later afternoon in the yard, chatting, listening to Sekuru’s 19-key karimba, drinking beer, myself trying to tune the two Zonke-tuning matepes which I had commissioned a few months ago to my liking, under Sekuru’s guidance. We quickly realised that filming a master craftsman building an instrument only goes that far – he…

This Sunday was our day off. We had some nice chats in the afternoon and Sekuru brought up a point he had already mentioned before: “One matepe is enough to call the spirits, with the nhare [mbira dzavadzimu] you need two instruments (or an exceptionally good player that can take the role of two).” I…

Recording outdoors is not easy. Every morning we set up our equipment, and take it down in the evening. At daytime there’s usually no electricity – which turned out to be a blessing, otherwise you hear noise and music from all over. There’s a whole range of familiar street noises from the other side of…