Oliver ‘Tuku’ Mtukudzi: Celebrating the Spirituality of Indigenous Africans Through Music

Abstract

In Africa, spirituality and music are interconnected. Africa’s rich cultural values inspired by its indigenous spirituality are expressed through many ways that include music. Music includes references to the Supreme Being, ancestral spirits, creatures, and objects of nature connected with the religious experiences, interpersonal relations and events in the life of the society. Music, therefore, has a unique way of expressing a deep connection between the worlds of the physical and the spiritual. Oliver Mtukudzi’s ‘Tuku’ music is not an exception. He sang about a whole spectrum of issues that concern humankind. In this chapter, we revisit the spiritual aspect, reflecting on Mtukudzi’s music as a celebration of the spirituality of the indigenous Africans. We contend that Mtukudzi sought to recover, reconstruct, and reinsert African spirituality in contexts where foreign religious identities dominate. In this regard, we consider Mtukudzi as advancing a vigorous reconstruction agenda of the African indigenous spirituality. The chapter begins with Mtukudzi’s brief history, followed by a critical reflection on the resonances of some selected texts from ‘Tuku’ music. It then addresses the main concerns of the spirituality of the indigenous Africans that include health and well-being, harmony, industriousness, and death. We use mainly the Shona people of Zimbabwe to avoid the challenges of variations that characterize the spiritual landscape of the indigenous Africans.