READING Mhoze Chikowero’s book, African Music, Power and Being in Colonial Zimbabwe, I came across an interesting quote from Micere Mugo: “Cultural zombies can neither create nor defend their birthright.”
What constitutes a cultural zombie?
What is our birthright?
These and more questions came to mind as I pondered the import of Mugo’s observation.
Atlantic Slave Trade is arguably the biggest and most violent human translocation in the history of humanity.
Its traumas still afflict African-Americans to this day.
They were transplanted from their African landscapes, survived violent journeys to American plantations, were humiliated as trade commodities and lost their cultures and languages through separation and subjugation (alienation).
Long after the end of the slave trade, they have remained chained to the vices of American civilisation; sex, drugs and guns (including violence).
I came across fleeting references to the slave trade in primary school history and geography lessons.
The focus was on the ‘slave trade triangle’ in European industrialisation and the magnanimity of British abolitionists.
Good gentleman I thought of the later (William Wilberforce).
I drew the portrait of William Wilberforce with passion befitting a fine Englishman.
I hated the Arab resisters.
My image of African-Americans then was of a fortunate black race; God-fearing, English-speaking and citizens of a highly civilised America.
I could, at the drop of a coin, have swopped my Unyetu misery for African-Americans’ good living.
‘Negroes’ we called them in a non-derogatory way.
At night, around the fireplace, during the planting season, when it was taboo to have ngano or zvirahwe, mother taught us Negro carols.
‘Oh Freedom’ was my favourite:
“Oh freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me
And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free
No more moaning, no more moaning, no more moaning over me
And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free
No more weeping, no more weeping, no more weeping over me
And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free
No more tommin’, no more tommin’, no more tommin’ over me
And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free
There’ll be singin’, there’ll be singin’, there’ll be singin’ over me
And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free
There’ll be glory, there’ll be glory, there’ll be glory over me
And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free”
I sang the hymn with gusto and saw myself sharing the same happy ‘grave’ future with my ‘negro’ brothers and sisters.
Mother loved it.
She encouraged me to work harder at school and hopefully one day I would get a scholarship to the Americas.
As fate would have it, a travel laden career many years later has conspired against a childhood dream to visit America.
What was not made clear was why the negroes were moaning, crying and tomming.
They had lost a whole culture and spirituality.
They had lost their pride and identity.
They had become Mugo’s cultural zombies.
They buried their sorrows in a new found religion.
It took African-Americans over two centuries to fully become cultural zombies. We fared slightly better under colonialism.
We remained and resisted within familiar territory.
Of course Christianity and education were mercilessly unleashed against indigenous cultures.
Indigenous tunes and instruments were consigned to demonism.
While the drum and mbira continued to be played in stubborn traditional ceremonies, the guitar, piano and pennywhistle took over as instruments of civilised music.
At school and in church, choir became synonymous with music.
Indeed school sports festivals consisted of soccer, netball, track athletics, physical education (PT) and choral music.
I tried my luck in the latter two with disastrous results.
At PT (combining drum majorette routines, gymnastics and physical stretches) the master chased me away for clumsiness while the choir master always traced the discordant voice to me.
He chided me for eating too much maputi.
Without me, our school choir attained legendary status.
It excelled in songs like, ‘Pandarangarira Cecilia’, ‘Maiwe ndobhururuka senyenganyenga’ and ‘Kwaziwai mai nababa’.
The songs were divorced from our daily trials and tribulations.
A decade earlier, my mother recalls how village songs had become quite politicised following the formation of ZAPU.
In Murehwa they sang, ‘Tsuro darikamutanda… tsurowe’, ‘Nkomo tinoda zvikoro’, ‘Nkomo hatina zvikoro’ and ‘Nkomo moto muchiona makamutarisa muchiona’.
Soon protest songs like ‘Tinorwira nyika yedu’ spread countrywide with the spread of nationalism.
Nyika became the unmistaken birthright.
Where our Afro-American brothers had resigned themselves to freedom in the life after ‘Oh Freedom’, the local breed saw nyika, land/country/nation as the birth right that had to be liberated.
By the late 1970s, Unyetu was reverberating to Second Chimurenga tunes. Zimbabwe was the prize, the birthright.
It stands to reason therefore that Mugo’s birthright is both our inheritance from our ancestors and what we bequeath to future generations.
And in either scenario we must guard against being cultural zombies.