Ephat Mujuru

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.

Although Mujuru played all of Zimbabwe's five types of mbira, he specialty was the mbira dzavadzimu.

Ephat Mujuru was raised in a small village in Manicaland, near the Mozambican border, and was taught to play the mbira by his grandfather, Muchatera Mujuru. Muchatera was a medium for one of the most important ancestor spirits in Shona cosmology, Chaminuka. Showing clear talent for the rigours of mbira training, Ephat advanced quickly, playing his first possession ceremony when he was just ten. At his Rhodesian-run Catholic school, young Mujuru's teachers told him that to play mbira was a "sin against God." This irritated Muchatera so much that he withdrew his grandson and sent him to school in an African township outside the capital, Salisbury, present day Harare.

In the big city, Mujuru hesitated before committing himself to the life of a musician. He recalled in a 1994 interview, "I worked in an accounting office. But the people there were very colonial. They had so much hate on. They didn't respect African people." Amid excuses, the office ultimately fired Mujuru. "It was sad," he said, "Because I thought life was beginning, and then I had no job. I was eighteen and very confused."

All along, Mujuru says that there was a "silent voice" telling him that his hope lay in mbira music. Following that voice, Mujuru began spending time in the village of Bandambira, where he studied with a great old mbira player of the same name. In the highland corn fields near Mhondoro, beneath Zimbabwe's big skies full of large birds, battleship clouds, and horsetail sunsets, Mujuru reaffirmed his ties to the mbira. Soon, he went to live and apprentice with another master player, Simon Mashoko.

Soon, Mujuru's path became clear—to follow in the footsteps of Muchatera Mujuru, Mubayiwa Bandambira, and Simon Mashoka. "They had respect," said Mujuru emphatically. "They were not as rich as those accounting people, but they were much happier."

In 1972, Mujuru formed his first group, Chaminuka, the group he performed with throughout the brutal decade of the independence war. In this period, Mujuru managed to get national radio play for a slyly political song. "How can I cross the river?" asked the song "Guruswa," which means ancient Africa in Shona. Perhaps Rhodesian radio programmers heard only quaint nostalgia in the song, but future Zimbabweans got the message. "It was talking about our struggle to free ourselves." explained Mujuru. "We wanted the place to be like it was before colonization."

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