The military entertainment complex : Chimurenga Afrosonic making of Zimbabwe / Mhoze Chikowero

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chikowero, Mhoze, 1972- author.

Series:

Global South cosmologies and epistemologies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chimurenga (Music).

Popular music--Social aspects--Zimbabwe.

Popular music.

Zimbabwe--History--1980-.

Zimbabwe.

Popular music--Social aspects.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2026]

Summary:

"The story of the making of post-independence Zimbabwe from the sounds and songs born of the country's armed liberation wars, waged against British Rhodesian white settler rule since the 1890s. The war to resist the initial colonization in 1896-1900s, as well as the one waged to reclaim land from the colonial farmers in the 2000s, is known as Chimurenga, and the music it produced is thus called Chimurenga music. The sounds and music were Afrosonic, that is, deeply grounded in the ideology of the 1960-70s war, spawning the cultural liberation of a people whose self-expression the colonial system had criminalized and oppressed for close to a century. The living labs of the liberation war, Chimurenga, powered not just military, but also cultural rearmament, thereby producing cultural blueprints for a confident, regenerative public consciousness and expressiveness as independence. The title captures the sounds of self-liberation, framing a state of militant audibility in both public cultural expressiveness, public policy propagation, and contestation. It invites readers to imagine, see, hear and feel self-liberation war redeployed as popular entertainment in the service of state making"-- MIT Press Direct

Contents:

Chimurenga Afrosonicity : an introduction

Independence kinopoesis : reclaiming, recomposing the Afrosoni-city

Reengineering the soul : sonic self-liberation

“Who is Amai VaDhikondo?” The sonicities of the Gukurahundi

An anti-Tekere interlude : “Toenda KwaMutare Netsoka”

The sonicity of picks and shovels : waging the war of economic development

Hondo Yeminda : Chimurenga afrosonicities of land reclamation

Farming hunger? Chimurenga afrosonic dissonance

Galamania : dramas of ritualized power(lessness)

The antigala gala : subverting Chimurenga on stage

Jenaguru conversation : the political economics of military entertainment

Chimurenga Afrosonicity in MaDzimbabwe longue durée : a conclusion

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (MIT Press Direct , viewed July 29, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version: Chikowero, Mhoze, 1972- Military entertainment complex

ISBN:

9780262053327

0262053322

9780262053334

0262053330

OCLC:

1603199838

Access Restriction:

Some versions: Open access versions available from some providers open access