Popular music as a mirror to the Zimbabwean crisis

Abstract

Zimbabwe has a decade (1998 - 2008) which it witnessed economic meltdown. It is during this period that the lives of the people changed for the worst due to various circumstances. The decade of crisis in Zimbabwe has seen various artists also coming up with popular music to raise awareness on the causes and effects of the problems they faced. The music also triggers people’s feelings on the issues like unemployment, unfair treatment of the masses and survival of the fittest among others that concern them during that time. In this decade, people’s lives were disorientated such that all these various dimensions of their existence came to be expressed through popular music. Against this background, the task of this paper is to exude how popular music has been used to mirror Zimbabwean crisis during the period (1998 - 2008). The researcher has employed content analysis in analysing the songs that have been selected in the paper. The research is informed by African popular culture model and ethnography of communication.The paper explores Zhakata’s album ‘Vagoni vebasa’ as a projector tothe crisis as it was released in 1997. It moves on to Chimbetu’s Ndaremerwa which was a 1999 release and already the rat was already smelled as reflected in the album. Finally, Mapfumo’s Mamvemve narrates the situation as it manifested during the time in question. The article observes that popular music is a powerful tool in articulating important and even sensitive issues to the people (those in power and the masses). It has been noted that even if it brings out pertinent issues like that, sometimes it ends up being art for art’s sake for it does not solve people’s problems except that it saves to record history of a people at a particular period in time. It concludes that while popular music managed to mirror Zimbabwean crisis during 1998 – 2008 possible or suggestive measures have to be provided as well.