About
Hailing from the border town of Victoria Falls in the Chinotimba township, Mokoomba is leading the way for an emerging younger generation of musicians rebuilding the Zimbabwean music scene, a scene decimated by the AIDS epidemic that swept Africa. Also striking is their outsider status: these young musicians do not belong to Zimbabwe's majority Shona ethnic group or to the country's largest minority, Ndebele. They instead are from an assortment of smaller tribes: Tonga, Luvale, and Nyanja.
Coming from a bustling tourist border town gave the group the freedom to create their own sound, combining favorite parts of their own Tonga music and culture with sounds from all over the world, including Congolese rumba and soukous, and the funk and hip hop they heard on the radio. They echo such legends as Oliver Mtukudzi and Thomas Mapfumo by creating a new facet of Zimbabwean music. While Mutukudzi and Mapfumo are known for their political and social messaging, Mokoomba chooses to stay out of politics but continues to highlight social issues affecting Zimbabwe.
The members of Mokoomba met in school, their budding musicianship nurtured by a local musician, Alfred Mjimba, "[He] encouraged us to stay focused and never forsake our cultures just to be famous ... and to stay together as a team," says bassist Abundance Mutori.
Mutori, drummer Ndaba Coster Moyo, keyboardist Donald Moyo and percussionist Miti Mugande provide the polyrhythms that make the music so infectious. Trustworth Samende brings a graceful virtuosity to the lilting guitar arpeggios. Lead singer Mathias Muzaza, the son of a refugee from Angola's civil war and an example of the displaced populations of Southern Africa, lends his tenor-at times clear and sparkling and at others, gravelly-to the lyrics.
"As young people who have grown up in Africa at this present moment," says Mutori, "we are trying to bring across a message to other young people that they shouldn't be running away from the roots of our traditional culture."