‘Welcome singing sungura queens’: cultural studies and the promotion of female musicians in a Zimbabwean male-dominated music genre

Abstract

It has been repeated over the years that Zimbabwean popular music is a male-domain and the best-selling sungura genre is nearly exclusively composed by male musicians. Female musicians have opted for the socially acceptable gospel music, avoiding the secular sungura for fear of stigmatisation. Many other reasons have been provided to explain women’s virtual absence from the sungura genre, some of them sound, and yet others purely sexist and ludicrous. Using Cultural Studies and critical political economy approaches, which seek to both critique and transform the current gender demographics of sungura band leadership, vocalism and monopoly of instrument playing, this paper attempts to provide ways of introducing and nurturing female sungura musicians into the recording and performing industry. Such introduction of female sungura personalities is not only to add to the exciting diversity of creative sungura suppliers, but to expand the discursive and democratic spaces in which women can self-articulate, ironically within a medium that has been accused of negatively stereotyping and objectifying them.