Melodies of God: the significance of the soundscape in conserving the Great Zimbabwe landscape

ABSTRACT

Sacred landscapes require a holistic approach for conservation. They are intimate spaces, susceptible to cultural erosion if the focus is on material culture only. Mainstream conservation theories and processes, developed from western heritage traditions, emphasize monumentality. However, there are unquantifiable connections between people and place, which if eroded, can result in memory erasure and, ultimately, the un-inheriting of the heritage place. Soundscape, the relationship between people and the sounds around them, is an innovative way to understand these intimate connections. Using Great Zimbabwe, I examine how local communities connect and sustain place memory through preservation of intangible heritage. Several events at Great Zimbabwe have shown that soundscape is one way to represent these connections and that preserving the soundscape can also enhance tangible heritage conservation. I examine how the Great Zimbabwe cultural landscape’s soundscape is used to preserve memory and sustain connections between the people and the landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Great Zimbabwe
• cultural landscape
• soundscapes
• mbira
• music
• voices

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the assistance given by the communities living near Great Zimbabwe during my research. I thank all the elders from the Nemamwa, Mugabe and Charumbira clans who volunteered to narrate their folklore and analysed them with me for use in this paper. I would also want to express my gratitude to the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe staff at the Great Zimbabwe National Monument, (the Regional Director, Mr. Mandima, archaeologist, Elton Sagiya and education officer, Sekuru Haruvizishe), for facilitating the research and providing me with space to collect myths and stories about Great Zimbabwe. The research leading to these results received funding from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions of the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme under REA grant agreement no. RE 312301 (METAPHOR).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ashton Sinamai is a Zimbabwean archaeologist who has worked in Zimbabwe and Namibia, Australia and the UK. Ashton has been a resource person for ICCROM/AFRICA 2009 projects in southern and eastern Africa and has published several papers in archaeology, heritage management and heritage impact assessments in Africa. Currently, he is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Experienced Researcher at the University of York, UK.

ORCID

Ashton Sinamai http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1891-3062

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (RE 312301).