Shona Mbira Music

Shona mbira music is the ceremonial and social music of the Shona people of Zimbabwe, built on the mbira dzavadzimu, a lamellophone of 22 to 28 metal keys mounted on a wooden soundboard and played inside a large calabash resonator. Two or three mbira interlock cyclic melodies over hosho gourd-rattle patterns and singing — chanting, poetry and yodelling — in pieces that can run for hours. Its centre is the bira, the all-night ceremony at which the music summons ancestral spirits (vadzimu) to possess a medium and advise the living community.