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Four Brothers (band)
The Four Brothers were a pop group from Zimbabwe. The members were not brothers. They played fast-paced guitar-based pop music with songs sung in the Shona language. Their lead guitar string-plucking sound is reminiscent of the sound of the African mbira instrument and is a style known as 'jit'. History Founded in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) in 1977 by Marshall Munhumumwe and Never Mutare with Edward Matigasi and Aleck Chipaika, the band gained international recognition in the late 1980s with UK BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel being their most well known advocate. Marshall Munhumumwe was the maternal uncle of Zimbabwean star Thomas Mapfumo. Marshal Munhumumwe was the last born in the family of Thomas Mapfumo's mother. At the time the Four Brothers formed, bands in Rhodesia were not allowed to play traditional African music. The Four Brothers therefore played rock and roll cover versions of well-known artists such as the Beatles. They took up a residency position at the Saratoga bar in Sa ...
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Harare
Harare (; formerly Salisbury ) is the capital and most populous city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of 940 km2 (371 mi2) and a population of 2.12 million in the 2012 census and an estimated 3.12 million in its metropolitan area in 2019. Situated in north-eastern Zimbabwe in the country's Mashonaland region, Harare is a metropolitan province, which also incorporates the municipalities of Chitungwiza and Epworth. The city sits on a plateau at an elevation of above sea level and its climate falls into the subtropical highland category. The city was founded in 1890 by the Pioneer Column, a small military force of the British South Africa Company, and named Fort Salisbury after the UK Prime Minister Lord Salisbury. Company administrators demarcated the city and ran it until Southern Rhodesia achieved responsible government in 1923. Salisbury was thereafter the seat of the Southern Rhodesian (later Rhodesian) government and, between 1953 and 1963, th ...
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Cooking Vinyl
Cooking Vinyl is a British independent record label, based in Acton, London, England, founded in 1986 by former manager and booking agent Martin Goldschmidt and business partner Pete Lawrence. Goldschmidt remains the current owner and chairman, while Rob Collins is managing director. The company focuses on artist service-based deals where the artist retains ownership of their copyrights. History 1986–1992 Cooking Vinyl was set up in 1986 by former manager and booking agent Martin Goldschmidt and distribution manager Pete Lawrence, who initially ran the business as a part-time venture out of a spare room in Goldschmidt's council house in Stockwell, South London. In 1986 Cooking Vinyl recorded an impromptu live performance around a campfire at a folk festival by the singer Michelle Shocked, on a Sony Walkman with fading batteries. One of its first releases, Cooking Vinyl released the recording as The Campfire Tapes, and it sold 250,000 copies worldwide. In 1989, the compan ...
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Thomas Mapfumo
Thomas Tafirenyika Mapfumo (born July 3, 1945) is a musician nicknamed "The Lion of Zimbabwe" and "Mukanya" (the praise name of his clan in the Shona language) for his immense popularity and for the political influence he wields through his music, including his sharp criticism of the government of former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. He both created and made popular Chimurenga music, and his slow-moving style and distinctive voice is instantly recognisable to Zimbabweans. Mapfumo was imprisoned without charges under the white-dominated regime of Rhodesia, and he was hounded by the Mugabe government of Zimbabwe that succeeded it. He lived in exile in the United States for two decades, and in April 2018, returned to Zimbabwe for the first time since 2005 to perform a concert. Biography Mapfumo was born in 1945 in Marondera, Mashonaland East, a town southeast of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, though at the time the capital was called Salisbury and the country was a c ...
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Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozambique to the east. The capital and largest city is Harare. The second largest city is Bulawayo. A country of roughly 15 million people, Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, with English, Shona, and Ndebele the most common. Beginning in the 9th century, during its late Iron Age, the Bantu people (who would become the ethnic Shona) built the city-state of Great Zimbabwe which became one of the major African trade centres by the 11th century, controlling the gold, ivory and copper trades with the Swahili coast, which were connected to Arab and Indian states. By the mid 15th century, the city-state had been abandoned. From there, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe was established, followed by the Rozvi and Mutapa empires. The British Sout ...
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Shona Language
Shona (; sn, chiShona) is a Bantu language of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. It was codified by the colonial government in the 1950s. According to ''Ethnologue'', Shona, comprising the Zezuru, Korekore and Karanga dialects, is spoken by about 7.5 million people. The Manyika dialect of Shona is listed separately by ''Ethnologue'', and is spoken by 1,025,000 people. The larger group of historically related languages—called Shona languages by linguists—also includes Ndau (Eastern Shona) and Kalanga (Western Shona). Instruction Shona is a written standard language with an orthography and grammar that was codified during the early 20th century and fixed in the 1950s. In the 1920s, the Rhodesian administration was faced with the challenge of preparing schoolbooks and other materials in the various languages and dialects and requested the recommendation of South African linguist Clement Doke. The first novel in Shona, Solomon Mutswairo's ''Feso'', was published in 1957. Sh ...
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Mbira
Mbira ( ) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and plucking the tines with the thumbs (at minimum), the right forefinger (most mbira), and sometimes the left forefinger. Musicologists classify it as a lamellaphone, part of the plucked idiophone family of musical instruments. In Eastern and Southern Africa, there are many kinds of mbira, often accompanied by the hosho, a percussion instrument. It is often an important instrument played at religious ceremonies, weddings, and other social gatherings. The "Art of crafting and playing Mbira/Sansi, the finger-plucking traditional musical instrument in Malawi and Zimbabwe" was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020. A modern interpretation of the instrument, the kalimba, was commerciall ...
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Rhodesia
Rhodesia (, ), officially from 1970 the Republic of Rhodesia, was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, equivalent in territory to modern Zimbabwe. Rhodesia was the ''de facto'' successor state to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, which had been self-governing since achieving responsible government in 1923. A landlocked nation, Rhodesia was bordered by South Africa to the south, Bechuanaland (later Botswana) to the southwest, Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia) to the northwest, and Mozambique ( a Portuguese province until 1975) to the east. From 1965 to 1979, Rhodesia was one of two independent states on the African continent governed by a white minority of European descent and culture, the other being South Africa. In the late 19th century, the territory north of the Transvaal was chartered to the British South Africa Company, led by Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes and his Pioneer Column marched north in 1890, acquiring a huge block of territory that the ...
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John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey (DJ) and radio presenter. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004. Peel was one of the first broadcasters to play psychedelic rock and progressive rock records on British radio. He is widely acknowledged for promoting artists of multiple genres, including pop, dub reggae, punk rock and post-punk, electronic music and dance music, indie rock, extreme metal and British hip hop. Fellow DJ Paul Gambaccini described Peel as "the most important man in music for about a dozen years". Peel's Radio 1 shows were notable for the regular "Peel sessions", which usually consisted of four songs recorded by an artist in the BBC's studios, often providing the first major national coverage to bands that later achieved fame. Another feature was the annual Festive Fifty countdown of hi ...
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The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the development of 1960s counterculture and popular music's recognition as an art form. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock 'n' roll, their sound incorporated elements of classical music and traditional pop in innovative ways; the band also explored music styles ranging from folk and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock. As pioneers in recording, songwriting and artistic presentation, the Beatles revolutionised many aspects of the music industry and were often publicised as leaders of the era's youth and sociocultural movements. Led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the Beatles evolved from Lennon's previous group, the Quarrymen, and built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over three years from 1960, initia ...
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Chimurenga
''Chimurenga'' is a word in the Shona language. The Ndebele equivalent, though not as widely used since the majority of Zimbabweans are Shona speaking, is ''Umvukela'', meaning "revolutionary struggle" or uprising. In specific historical terms, it also refers to the Ndebele and Shona insurrections against administration of the British South Africa Company during the late 1890s—the Second Matabele War, or First ''Chimurenga''—and the war fought between African nationalist guerrillas and the predominantly white Rhodesian government during the 1960s and 1970s—the Rhodesian Bush War, or Second ''Chimurenga''/''Imvukela''. The concept is also occasionally used in reference to the land reform programme undertaken by the Government of Zimbabwe since 2000, which some call a Third ''Chimurenga''. Proponents of land reform regard it as the final phase in what they hold to be the liberation of Zimbabwe through economic and agrarian reforms intended to empower indigenous people, d ...
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Shed Studios
Shed Studios was responsible for the production of hundreds of band recordings and a large body of music used for various advertisements and films in Rhodesia, and later in Zimbabwe, from 1975 until 2000. The company "Shed Recording Studios (Pvt) Ltd" (now defunct) began in 1975, as a collaboration between Steve Roskilly, Martin Norris and Neil Thain, all employees of Rhodesia Television. The beginning Initially housed in a converted caravan, the first studio was based on a half inch 8 track Itam 805 tape recorder and series 2 Soundcraft 12:4:2 mixer, mastering onto a Revox A77 Reel to Reel tape recorder. This outfit learned its trade by making a series of live recordings at various music venues around Salisbury, the capital City, but soon found that the uniqueness of the mobile caravan, became more of a restriction than an advantage and a proper studio was seen as essential for progress. Advertising jingles Both Norris and Roskilly were, by now, working full time for Blackberry ...
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BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It specialises in modern popular music and current chart hits throughout the day. The station provides alternative genres at night, including electronica, dance, hip hop and indie, while its sister station 1Xtra plays black contemporary music, including hip hop and R&B. Radio 1 also runs two online streams, Radio 1 Dance, dedicated to dance music, and Radio 1 Relax, dedicated to chill-out music; both are available to listen only on BBC Sounds. Radio 1 broadcasts throughout the UK on FM between and , digital radio, digital TV and BBC Sounds. It was launched in 1967 to meet the demand for music generated by pirate radio stations, when the average age of the UK population was 27. The BBC claims that it targets the 15–29 age group, and the average age of its UK audience since 2009 is 30. BBC Radio 1 started 24-hour broadcasting on 1 May 1991. According to RAJAR, the station broadcasts to ...
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