Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:25:24.863Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Form as Weapon: the Political Function of Song in Urban Zimbabwean Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Martin Rohmer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Zimbabwean society, what may not be spoken sometimes becomes acceptable in song – whether to avoid social taboos and enable a wife to complain against her mother-in-law, or in broadening the boundaries of political protest. In this article, Martin Rohmer looks back to the ways in which song enabled forms of protest against forced labour and other aspects of colonial rule – in times of outward compliance as well as of direct struggle – and considers how urban theatre groups in independent Zimbabwe have adapted the tradition to their own, contemporary ends. Martin Rohmer spent almost two years studying Zimbabwean theatre when a research assistant at the University of Bayreuth, and completed his doctorate on Theatre and Performance in Zimbabwe at the Humboldt University, Berlin, in 1997. Since then he has been working in the field of cultural management for the Young Artists' Festival in Bayreuth. The present paper was first presented at the Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in San Francisco in November 1996.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , May 2000 , pp. 148 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Balme, Christopher: Theater im postkolonialen Zeitalter: Studien zum Theatersynkretismus im englischsprachigen Raum (Tübingen: Nax Niemeyer Verlag, 1995), p. 30.Google Scholar
Berliner, Paul, ‘Political Sentiment in Shona Song and Oral Literature’, Essays in Arts and Sciences, VI, No. 1 (03 1977), p. 1–29.Google Scholar
Bessant, Leslie: ‘Songs of Chiweshe and Songs of Zimbabwe’, African Affairs, XC, No. 370 (01 1994), p. 43–73.Google Scholar
Fairley, Jan, ‘Analyzing a Performance: Narrative and Ideology in Concerts by Karaxú’, Popular Music, VIII, No. 1 (01 1989), p. 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaemmer, John Edmund, ‘Social Power and Music Change the Shona’, Ethnomusicology, XXXIII, No. 1 (Winter 1989), p. 31–45.Google Scholar
Kahari, George P., ‘The History of the Shona Protest Song: a Preliminary Study’, Zambezia: the Journal of the University of Zimbabwe, IX, No. 2 (1981), p. 79–101.Google Scholar
Mhlanga, Cont Mdladla, Workshop Negative: a Play (Harare: College Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Mujajati, George, The Wretched Ones: a Play (Harare: Longman Zimbabwe, 1992).Google Scholar
Mujajati, George, The Rain of my Blood: a Play (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1991).Google Scholar
Mujajati, George, Victory: a Novel (Harare: College Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Musengezi, Gonzo H., The Honourable MP: a Play (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1984, reprinted 1990).Google Scholar
Ndlovu, T. P., The Return: a Play (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Plastow, Jane, African Theatre and Politics: the Evolution of Theatre in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. A Comparative Study (Amsterdam; Atlanta: Rodopi, 1996).Google Scholar
Pongweni, Alex J. C., Songs that Won the Liberation War (Harare: College Press, 1982).Google Scholar
Sherman, Jessica, ‘Songs of. the Chimurenga’, Africa Perspective, No. 16 (Winter 1980), p.80–8.Google Scholar
Thiong'o, Ngugi wa, Decolonizing the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature (Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1987).Google Scholar