Queen of Mbira at SMC
Students were invited on to the stage to view how the 'Mbira' (thumb piano) is played (by strumming the inside of the gourd) by the 'Queen of Mbira,' Beauler Dyoko from Zimbabwe and SMC Music Professor Dr. Ric Alviso on Tuesday November 29, 2005 during the "Music & Life in Zimbabwe" Concert by Beauler Dyoko . This event was sponcered by the Santa Monica College Associates and the Music Department. Beauler Dyoko, known in Zimbabwe as the "Queen of Mbira Music," is Zimbabwe's first woman mbira recording artist. She is leader and featured singer with the popular contemporary mbira ensemble, The Black Souls, and has regularly been invited to perform a traditional song to open the Zimbabwean Parliament. She has also performed with Mhuri yekwa Rwizi/Soul of Mbira groups for many years in Zimbabwe and throughout the world. Beauler is also a spirit medium, an herbalist, fashion designer, and teacher of traditional Shona cooking. Beauler is an active member of organizations promoting women musicians in Zimbabwe, and has written original songs in support of AIDS awareness and non-violence. She is the sole supporter of a large extended family of grandchildren, nieces and nephews in Zimbabwe.
Update on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 at 07:53PM by
Fabian Lewkowicz
Fabian Lewkowicz
Posted on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 at 02:40PM
by
Fabian Lewkowicz
in Santa Monica College
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1 Comment
Fabian Lewkowicz
in Santa Monica College
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1 Comment
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Reader Comments (1)
I would like to suggest two corrections to your text. The mbira is not played "by strumming the inside of the gourd" but rather by stroking the metal keys of the mbira itself, which is often fastened inside a gourd resonator for louder sound and different timbre.
Also, I recommend leaving the term "thumb piano" on the scrap heap of history. It was coined by Western visitors to Africa who preferred making up an inaccurate term from their own culture to using the actual names of the instruments they saw. Both "thumb" and "piano" are wrong. The Zimbabwean mbira and many other African lamellaphones are played with more fingers than just the thumbs, they are neither historically nor functionally related to the piano (which is a chordophone, not an idiophone), and in fact the mbira pre-dates the invention of the piano by at least a thousand years and likely far longer. Let's honor this amazing family of instruments by using their true names, not a foreign neologism that fails to describe the instruments accurately, that fails to respect their deep history, and that is just plain wrong.
Regards,
Paul Novitski
Dandemutande
A non-profit resource for Zimbabwean music & culture
http://www.dandemutande.org