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Tendayi (Samaita) Gahamadze (born July 3, 1959) is a Zimbabwean artist and songwriter.
Tendayi Gahamadze was born in Musengezi on his parents' farm and attended Mkwasha Primary School. He attended secondary school at Moleli.
In 1979, he left for the United Kingdom where he did his A levels.
In 1982, he studied metallurgy in Germany.
Tendayi Gahamadze was a member of a school choir and learned to play instruments when he was in the UK. He was fascinated by the sound of Mbira but did not expect to play the instrument. Whilst in Germany at a seminar in Essen, he and his fellow Zimbabwean students had no option but to sing Ishe Komborera Africa in contrast with the Congolese and Latin American students who played their Rhumba and Salsa music respectively. On returning to Zimbabwe, he was told that it had been prophesied that he would be a prominent mbira player. Being 30, he brushed it aside and wondered how he would learn to play this instrument. A year later, he found himself under the mentorship of spiritual leader Choshata of the Mhara Mbuya Chikonamombe totem. He spent a year living with Albert and Benjamin Gobvu who were respected mbira players in Mhondoro. They assisted in the tuning of the mbiras but never attempted to play since it seemed far beyond his capabilities, according to Gahamadze. Choshata recommended that Tendayi buy his own Mbira, which he did.
With this Mbira, he went to another Mbira manufacturer, Seke, who made two more mbiras of the same tuning for him. He left Choshata's shrine for Norton where his family was. He had in possession a set of three mbiras which he could not play. It happened overnight, as it were, that he started playing the mbira without being directed by anyone. He started teaming up with different mbira players and performing with them at cultural ceremonies and gatherings. Magwimbe Mlambo and Wilfred Mafrika were with him in the beginning. Having had some guitar band experience with college bands during his time at university, Tendayi went on to buy guitar pick-ups and started manufacturing his own mbiras and electrifying them. He formed the group Mbira dzeNharira which had its first recording, Rine Manyanga Hariputirwe, in 1998, which immediately topped the charts.
To date Mbira dzeNharira has won five musical awards. [1] [2]
The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel, the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children's instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use.
Mbira are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They consist of a wooden board with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and plucking the tines with the thumbs, the right forefinger, and sometimes the left forefinger. Musicologists classify it as a lamellaphone, part of the plucked idiophone family of musical instruments. In Eastern and Southern Africa, there are many kinds of mbira, often accompanied by the hosho, a percussion instrument. It is often an important instrument played at religious ceremonies, weddings, and other social gatherings. The "Art of crafting and playing Mbira/Sansi, the finger-plucking traditional musical instrument in Malawi and Zimbabwe" was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020.
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Thomas Tafirenyika Mapfumo is a Zimbabwean musician. He is nicknamed "The Lion of Zimbabwe" and "Mukanya" for his immense popularity and for the political influence he wields through his music, including his sharp criticism of the government of former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. He both created and popularized Chimurenga music, and is known for his distinctive voice and slow-moving style.
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Ephat Mujuru (1950–2001), was a Zimbabwean musician, one of the 20th century's finest players of the mbira, a traditional instrument of the Shona ethnic group of Zimbabwe.
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Stella Chiweshe was a Zimbabwean musician. She was known internationally for her singing and playing of the mbira dzavadzimu, a traditional instrument of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. She was one of few female players, and learned to play from 1966 to 1969, when other women did not.
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Andrew Tracey is a South African ethnomusicologist, promoter of African music, composer, folk singer, band leader, and actor. His father, Hugh Tracey (1903–1977), pioneered the study of traditional African music in the 1920s–1970s, created the International Library of African Music (ILAM) in 1954, and started the company African Musical Instruments (AMI) which manufactured the first commercial kalimbas in the 1950s.
Chris Berry is an American singer, songwriter, and musician. He plays the mbira and the ngoma drum, from the Shona people of Southern Africa. His records with the band Panjea have gone platinum in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. He has released over a dozen albums; scored the soundtrack for three films; and collaborated and performed with many other artists.
Chiwoniso Maraire was a Zimbabwean singer, songwriter, and exponent of Zimbabwean mbira music. She was the daughter of Zimbabwean mbira master and teacher Dumisani Maraire. Describing the mbira, an instrument traditionally used by male musicians, she said, "It is like a large xylophone. It is everywhere in Africa under different names: sanza, kalimba, etc. For us in Zimbabwe it is the name for many string instruments. There are many kinds of mbiras. The one that I play is called the nyunga nyunga, which means sparkle-sparkle."
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