Gibson Ncube, Stellenbosch University

Stella Rambisai Chiweshe, affectionately known in Zimbabwe as “the queen of mbira” or “Ambuya (grandmother) Chiweshe”, passed away on 20 January 2023.

Chiweshe was born in July 1946 in the rural area of Mhondoro in the Mashonaland province of northern Zimbabwe. She began playing the mbira, an ancient thumb piano, in the early 1960s. At the time she was reproached by both men and women because she had dared to play an instrument that was ordinarily played by men.

Chiweshe was not only a singer, songwriter and musician who performed extensively across Africa, Europe and the US. She was also a cultural activist, a pioneering woman and an educator. She founded the Chivanhu Centre in Zimbabwe, home to the preservation of traditional music and culture.

Chivanhu is a Shona word for humanity. One of her goals was to ensure that the mbira continued to be the heartbeat of Zimbabwe’s people. As the African adage goes: “When an old person dies, a library burns to the ground.” Her death is indeed a great loss to the country.

Pioneering force

The mbira, a powerful spiritual instrument used to communicate with the ancestors, was often played at traditional ceremonies by men. Historians trace its origins to 3,000 years ago on the west coast of Africa and to 1,300 years ago in the region that is now Zimbabwe. Chiweshe explained in an interview that:

Men played mbira, and for me to play mbira meant that I had to sit with men on either side of me. It made the women very uncomfortable.

Not only did the young Chiweshe face criticism from her family and community. She also had to contend with a ban on the instrument by the British colonial administration because the idea of ancestral worship went against their Christian values.

Chiweshe was a rebel by nature. She defied the British and played at underground night ceremonies. She would go on to be a pioneering force in several other ways.

She took mbira music beyond Zimbabwe and did important work in popularising the art form.

She was able to help fight the stigmatisation of this spiritual musical instrument.

She championed, with great pride and reverence, the dominant Shona ethnic group’s tradition and folklore through her music, which evoked a deep spirituality and connection to the ancestors.

Finally, she blazed a trail for other women, especially musicians. https://www.youtube.com/embed/6hmBDRciQl4?wmode=transparent&start=0 A young Chiweshe live in Germany.

I explain in a book chapter in Victors, Victims and Villains: Women and Musical Arts in Zimbabwe that her performances combined mystery, presence and the use of traditional lyrics to challenge not just patriarchy but also colonial rule.

Her music, like that of other Zimbabwean musicians such as Thomas Mapfumo and Oliver Mtukudzi, was the soundtrack of the Second Chimurenga (the war of liberation against the white minority Rhodesian regime).

Female trailblazer

Although she did not openly call herself a feminist, as a female mbira custodian and practitioner she was one. British music writer Dominic Valvona explains:

Trumpeted in our modern virtue-labeling climate as a ‘feminist’, the outspoken star was certainly strong-willed, even a rebel. Making a name for herself overcoming the obstacles of tradition and a patriarchal-dominated society, her obstinacy soon garnered attention, not only in Zimbabwe but further afield.

Chiweshe fought for recognition as a talented artist and gave voice to Zimbabwean womanhood, in all its comp