When time waited for Chirikure, Chiwoniso to sing again

PATIENCE MUSA

Seventeen years.

In the timeline of music, it’s an eternity.

A lifetime, even. Enough time for generations to pass through school gates, for voices to mature and break, for a city skyline to be torn down and built again. And yet, some stories are not meant to be rushed. Some creations need to steep like ancient tea leaves — in silence, in memory, in grief — until the moment is right.

On 28 June 2025, Chimanimani will finally step out into the world. A posthumous release, yes. But more than that — a resurrection. A return. A reawakening of a spiritual bond forged long ago between two Zimbabwean artistic giants: poet and cultural elder Chirikure Chirikure, and the late mbira queen Chiwoniso Maraire.

A five-track acoustic album recorded in 2008, Chimanimani is as much a musical offering as it is a time capsule — quiet, raw, sacred. It has waited patiently in the shadows for nearly two decades, holding within it echoes of laughter, pain, politics, and prayer. And now, it arrives.

“We always had the understanding that the poetry and music were complimentary,” Chirikure reflects. “None of us was backing the other — we were a unit.”

It’s a simple statement, but in it lies the key to this album’s quiet power. What you hear on Chimanimani is not a duet in the traditional sense. It is a weaving. A sonic braid of voice and spirit. Of verse and vibration. It is as if the ancestors themselves commissioned the project and asked them not to perform — but to remember.

Their shared journey began in the early 1990s, when a then-rising Chirikure found himself performing with Mhuri yaMaraire, the family ensemble of musical patriarch Dumisani Maraire, whose legacy in Zimbabwe and the diaspora remains legendary. Alongside him were Chiwoniso and her sister Tawona, then teenage artists already carrying the weight of inheritance. Together, they formed DeteMbira, a powerful collective where mbira and poetry met not as art forms, but as ancestral languages in dialogue.

Though life eventually pulled them in different directions — Chiwoniso to international acclaim as a solo performer, and Chirikure to Berlin residencies and global literary forums — their orbits remained connected. Always circling back. Always instinctively drawn to each other’s work. A rare and sacred kinship — artistic, spiritual, and deeply intuitive.

“There was an amazing natural creative and performance chemistry between us,” Chirikure says. “It grew deeper and deeper.”

In 2008, sensing the urgency to document their synergy, they quietly recorded five songs: intimate, stripped-down, and emotionally textured. No elaborate production. Just mbira, voice, percussion, and poetry. Nothing between them and the listener but breath.

And then, the silence.

The album never came out. Life intervened. Financial constraints. Chirikure’s relocation to Berlin for a residency. Projects and responsibilities. And in 2013, the devastating news: Chiwoniso had passed on.

“I tried to release the album when I returned in 2014,” Chirikure admits. “But somehow, I was just lethargic. I guess we all needed time to accept Chiwoniso’s passing.”

The pain was too fresh. The wound too tender. And perhaps, without realising it, he was also waiting for the world to be ready — for the right spiritual alignment. Because this is not music you throw into the marketplace. This is work you usher in with ritual and care.

Thanks to the diligence of sound engineer Tamie Bimha, who safeguarded the original recordings, and the gentle precision of producer Keith Farquharson at Bridgenorth Studios, the album has now been given the attention it deserves — polished not for gloss, but for truth. Nothing has been added. Only revealed.

And what a revelation it is.

The five tracks — Tinobhomba, Chimanimani – Stolen Light, Kanyanisa, Bread and Roses, and Mutserendende – Sliding Game — feel less like songs and more like offerings at a shrine. Each piece moves like smoke: rising, curling, disappearing into something beyond language.

Themes of social justice, resilience, dignity, and the eternal ache for human connection ripple through the record. There is no preaching here. Only remembering. A call back to self, to spirit, to ubuntu.

“We were particularly drawn to themes around social justice and respect for one another,” Chirikure says. “And her words, though recorded in 2008, carry even deeper meaning today. Some have developed new meaning over the years.”

And that’s the miracle of Chimanimani. It speaks to this moment, even though it was born in another. In an age of digital noise and throwaway content, it asks us to pause. To feel. To listen, not just with our ears — but with our bones.

This is not an album that will chase charts. It will not trend on TikTok or explode on Spotify algorithms. But it will sit with you. It will travel across borders quietly, one heart at a time. And it will find the listeners it is meant for — especially among younger Zimbabweans who are seeking their roots, yearning for voices that carry both the pain and the poetry of who we are.

“For the younger generations,” says Chirikure, “this is an opportunity to feel the past, embrace the legacy, and use that as a foundation to build the future on.”

Indeed. Chimanimani is not nostalgia. It is a compass.

The title track, Chimanimani – Stolen Light, is particularly arresting. Named after the mountain range that has long been a symbol of spiritual endurance and natural majesty, the song captures the ache of loss, the throb of memory, and the flicker of hope that refuses to die. It is a lament and a light. A prayer for all that has been taken — and all that still remains.

“It’s the greatest tribute you can pay to a fantastic human being and an artist of Chiwoniso’s stature,” Chirikure says, visibly moved. “Her voice, her words… they still carry us.”

And they do. Because while Chiwoniso may be gone in body, her presence on this album is alive. Unmistakably so. She sings as if she knows we’re still listening. As if she planned to return in this way all along — through sound, through silence, through memory.

Seventeen years later, Chimanimani has arrived not as a relic, but as a living archive. A sacred artefact. A sonic heirloom passed down from one generation to the next.

It is not just music.

It is home.

And it echoes.