The digital return of ILAM’s Zimbabwean recordings: revitalization of the sound archive through postcolonial engagement between ILAM and African universities

ABSTRACT

The International Library of African Music (ILAM) is located in South Africa and is the largest sound archive of African music on the continent. This article examines a project involving the digital return and revitalization of Zimbabwean mbira (The mbira (or thumb piano) is an instrument classified as lamellophone in the categorization of instruments (organology). The lamellophones belong to the type of instruments mostly found in sub-Saharan Africa.) recordings (the mbira is an instrument popularly known as the thumb piano or lamellophone) which was undertaken by the author during 2015–2016. The article describes how the project involved taking recordings from the sound archive in a digital format (CD or MP3 mainly) back to the country, region, or location where these recordings were made and how it led to increased engagement with the recordings and to collaboration between ILAM, the author, scholars, and mbira teachers in Zimbabwe. The outcomes from the project are detailed and the project is placed in the wider context of discourse around postcolonial studies and the repatriation of cultural heritage.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital return
• repatriation
• revitalization
• sound archive
• Zimbabwe
• mbira
• postcolonial studies

Notes

1. Accessed 17 December 2018 https://www.ru.ac.za/ilam/.

2. Mojaki, Repatriation and Revitalisation.

3. Lobley, Ethnomusicological Field Recording; and Madiba, “Repatriating Xhosa Music Recordings.”

4. Gimenez Amoros, The Mbira Sound Archive.

5. Gimenez Amoros and Vambe, Performing Zimbabwe.

6. Gimenez Amoros, How To Play Zimbabwean Mbiras.

7. Gimenez Amoros, The Revitalisation Of Zimbabwean Mbiras.

8. Lancefield, “The Repatriation of Recorded Sound,” 51.

9. Ibid., 53.

10. Ibid., 47.

11. Joshua, Christen, and Turin, “After The Return,” 196.

12. Solomon, “Postcolonial Ethnomusicology,” 229.

13. Fanon, The Wretched Of The Earth, 7.

14. Cabral, Liberation Struggle; Nkrumah, Autobiography; Nyerere, Freedom And Unity; and Vambe and Zegeye, Postcolonial Theory.

15. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject.

16. Mudimbe, The Invention Of Africa.

17. Mbembe, On The Postcolony.

18. Agawu, Representing African Music; and Chikowero, Being In Colonial Zimbabwe.

19. Mahamba et al., “Popularisation Of Musical Concerts In Harare Township.”

20. Berliner, The Soul Of Mbira; and Turino, Nationalist Zimbabwe.

21. Turino, “Worldbeat Mbira.”

22. Brown, “Chimurenga Guitar.”

23. Eyre, Music Censorship; and Thram, “Media Control.”

24. Butete, “Popular Music In Zimbabwe.”

25. Eyre, Music Censorship in Zimbabwe; and Thram, “Media Control.”

26. Interviewed 9 February 2016.

27. Tracey, Sound of Africa Series, Vol. 2, 1973: 387.

28. Interviewed 29 January 2016.

29. Ibid.

30. Interviewed 2 February 2016.

31. Interviewed 6 February 2016.

32. Interviewed 29 February 2016.

33. Hilder, “Repatriation, Revival And Transmission,” 161.

34. Nettl, Ethnomusicology, 168.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Unit of Zimbabwean Studies, Rhodes University [Mellon Foundation].