Picks of the Week - Thomas Mapfumo (Zimbabwe)

Showcasing a new favorite and an old favorite from Thomas Mapfumo.

It was the late Nineties or perhaps into the new century when I happened to run across a CD of The Best Of Thomas Mapfumo - Chimurenga Forever. It's a 1995 collection released on the Hemisphere label. Which appears to be out of business. Too bad.

I'd been casually listening to African music for a while, but there was something about this collection that really sunk its hooks in me. I picked up a few Thomas Mapfumo albums when I had the good fortune to run across them, but of course music wasn't as easy to come by back then as it is nowadays.

There were several songs that stood out from the pack on that collection. "Hwahwa" was one of them. Apparently, the word means beer, but don't hold me to that. It seems there are also several other songs by Mapfumo by the same name. That's a mystery to be untangled at a later date.

The song highlighted here is from Gwindingwi Rine Shumba, from 1981. It's Mapfumo's second album. I'm finally catching up on some of his stuff and just got around to listening to the whole album.

Four more albums came out after that one before Zimbabwe Mozambique appeared, in 1988. It's just five songs, but contains close to forty minutes of music. I thought it was all new to me, but as it turns out, two of the songs from the Hemisphere collection were drawn from here.

Some Thomas Mapfumo songs just seem to glide. That sounds like an odd way to describe music, but there it is. "Nhamo" is one of those songs and it goes on my personal Best Of Thomas Mapfumo list. Enjoy!