CELEBRATED mbira musician Hope Masike will tomorrow release a video based on a poem from her anthology of erotica entitled Ndimutsewo Zvakanaka. The poem is recited from a female perspective, interlaced with tongue-in-cheek exuberance and supported by baiting innuendo. Ndimutsewo Zvakanaka is appellant in its femininity, with suggestive undertones towards subtle corrective approaches between the gammer and the gaffer towards the ultimate enforcement of the listener attaining the peak experience wherein they “do it right”.
Ndimutsewo Zvakanaka’s video will serve as a transdisciplinary convergence among her literary, musical and visual pursuits. Masike’s conversations and publications around sensuality in Chidzimbahwe have made a shift to decriminalise the colonial enterprise’s criminalisation of the black body, notably the woman’s, fetishisation and debasement, by using poetry and song to rediscover the fulfilment all black woman can find in the reclamation and decolonisation of their own flesh. Embedded within this burgeoning decolonisation of the black body lies the use of language as the poetry is executed in Shona, which intensifies with each verse until the poem’s climactic crescendo.
Ndimutsewo Zvakanaka will kick off a series of reading tours that will traverse six provinces in the remainder of the year. Masike is one of the top celebrated mbira musicians in Zimbabwe. With four albums, four books and several collaborative and tour credits to her name, she continues to champion the custodianship of mbira locally and globally.
