The Music
Our band joins together to play both traditional and contemporary African songs on marimba, mbira, drums and voices. Teenager and adults join together to play this joyful music. Kuungana itself is a Swahili word that means to connect or join.
This lively, danceable music will get your feet tapping and your hips swaying in time to the complex, enticing rhythms. Listeners often call this “happy music,” and people of all ages respond to it with enthusiasm and delight.
We in the band play this amazing music for the joy it brings to us and to the audience. The lead marimba carries the musical storyline, the other marimbas carry the melodic patterns that weave through the song, and the traditional “hosho”, or gourd rattles, hold the driving beat. It all comes together in a tapestry of music guaranteed to get you out of your seat and onto the dance floor
Our teachers have included Zimbabweans such as Sheasby Matiure, Kurai Mubaiwa, Alport Mslanga, Lucky Moyo, Abel Mafuleni, and…..
The biggest thrill is taking a song we have learned and making it our ours. We add percussion, singing, movement and dynamic variations to make listening and dancing to our music even more fun.
The Instruments
Marimbas
The marimba, are hand-crafted – the keys are made of padouk, wenge and mahogany – all very hard woods that produce beautiful sounds. Below each key is a resonating tube which amplifies the music. Each resonator has a buzzer, a vibrating membrane attached to it. This buzz is thought by some to keep the evil spirits away and adds a unique quality to the music.
Mbira and Nyunga Nyunga
The mbira is an ancient African instrument with a long history of use in traditional ceremonies. It first appeared along the Zambezi river in what is now Zimbabwe about 13,000 years ago. Staggered metal keys are attached to a wooden sound board. Often the mbira is played inside a deze, a big gourd which provides amplification. Bottle caps are often attached to the instruments to create a buzzing sound. There are a number of mbira types. The one that we most commonly play is the mbira dzavadzimu which has 29 keys – arranged in two rows for the left hand and one row for the right. A second type of mbira that we play is the nyunga nyunga – which consists of 15 keys arranged in two rows.
Percussion Instruments
We incorporate more varied rhythms in our music as well. Clave, whistles, wood blocks, a kudu horn and drums all can supplement or replace the hosho. Generally in Zimbabwean music (unlike Western African music), the drum rhythms are simple and accompany the music rather than drive it.
Hosho
Hosho are traditional Zimbabwean rattles consisting of a pair of gourds with hota (an African lily) seeds. These instruments help keep the beat and are played with a variety of rhythms and manners.