It has been a tough start to the new year for Chimurenga music legend Thomas Mapfumo, who not only has had to deal with the death of his only surviving sister but the devastating passing of his lead guitarist’s son.
Warming weather and hot tunes are on tap this week to thaw thick blood and to refresh cultural gullets parched by the pandemic. Either sitting down or standing up, get ready to get those feet tapping, hips rolling and shoulders shaking with new local and national song releases on offer from CAFE 541 this week.
Local releases Kudhara, Ratie D
Right from the start, performer Ratie D’s December 2020 “Ink & Melodies” draws listeners in with a joyous collision of percussion, strings, horns and lyrics. Sung in English and her native Chivanhu language, the Zimbabwean Eugenean Ratie Dangarembwa Morgan sings about love, family and identity reflected in Eugene and from her south African roots.
RatieD. Courtesy Photo.
When she was a girl living in Zimbabwe, Eugene musician Claire Ratidzo Dangarembwa, who performs as RatieD, would sing out loud in front of an arts theater near her high school. “I generally would sing out loud, all the time, everywhere,” RatieD tells me over the phone, on the occasion of her debut EP,
Ink & Melodies, out now on music streaming services.
No one from the arts theater heard RatieD, but she kept singing, inspired at the time by pop musicians like Avril Lavigne and hip hop from Common as much as the traditional music of Zimbabwe. “I believed in myself,” she recalls of her life as a young musician in Africa. “There was something about my voice that would make someone want to hear me.”