Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Mbira (/ ə m ˈ b ɪər ə / əm-BEER-ə) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe.They consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and plucking the tines with the thumbs (at minimum), the right forefinger (most mbira), and sometimes the left forefinger.
There is also pop music in Zimbabwe and around the world that incorporates Zimbabwean indigenous instruments. For example, mbira player Chris Berry with his band Panjea have reached platinum record sales in Zimbabwe and Mozambique , playing a style of music based on traditional mbira rhythms and melodies, but incorporating various other ...
Main page; Contents; Current events; Random article; About Wikipedia; Contact us; Pages for logged out editors learn more
They are used as major instruments in many traditional Shona music genres, such as in mbira ensembles and in mhande. They typically contain hota ( Canna indica ) seeds inside them. [ 1 ] Before the hota seeds are added, the hosho is boiled in salted water and the inside is scraped out with a corncob, newspaper plug, or woven wire.
Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, [3] with English, Shona, and Ndebele the most common. Zimbabwe is a member of the United Nations, the Southern African Development Community, the African Union, and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. The region was long inhabited by the San, and was settled by Bantu peoples around 2,000 years ago.
Thomas Gale defined the word indigenous as to anything that is native to a particular geographical culture. Mbiti says in Zimbabwe Indigenous religion is in two classes, the Ndebele [2] [3] and Shona. [1] [4] [5] [6] However, Zimbabwe has a lot of minority tribes including the Tonga, Venda, Kalanga and Sothu.
[2] [3] Other elements to Zimbabwe dances include isolations, angularity (with the body bent at the waist), asymmetry, improvisation, a swinging quality, and movements outward from the hip. Dances are very self-reflective, evident in the improvisation and emotion expressed, and as with the music of Africa, participation is a key element.
In Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was then known, two main liberation movements, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), orchestrated a protracted guerrilla warfare against the minority white government led by Ian Smith, who had unilaterally declared independence from Britain in 1965 in a bid to prevent ...