Obituary: Stella Chiweshe (1946-2023)

Defying both social taboos and colonial laws to become one of the first professional female mbira players in Southern Africa, Stella Chiweshe took the traditional Shona music of what is now Zimbabwe and put it on an international stage.

Born in the village of Mujumi in Mashonaland, in what was then Southern Rhodesia, Chiweshe grew up steeped in Shona culture and its sacred traditions. They were difficult times under the yoke of colonial rule. Government and church sought to ban the mbira and the ceremonies in which it was used to summon ancestral spirits. Thankfully official disapproval failed to wipe out the Shona’s traditions. “If it is in the blood and the veins of the people, it is not possible to remove it,” Chiweshe told Songlines in November 2019 (#152).

Yet even as the mbira continued to be played by her people at clandestine gatherings, she faced a further obstacle in her desire to learn its secrets: in traditional Shona society, the mbira was a male domain and the idea of a woman playing the instrument was regarded as scandalous.

But Chiweshe remained convinced that it was her unique destiny. She heard the voices of her ancestors in her ear, telling her the only remedy to the pain in her chest was to play the instrument. “It gave me courage to ignore everyone. I ignored men, I ignored women, I ignored the government, I ignored the church,” she said. “That’s how I started to play.”

She sought the guidance of numerous elders, all of whom refused to teach her until a great uncle agreed to initiate her into the instrument’s sacred power when she was 16. She emerged after three years of intense study to become the ‘Queen of the Mbira,’ playing at the still forbidden bira ceremonies and risking imprisonment if caught. She also played the instrument in a secular context, forming her own band and beginning her recording career in 1974, with her first single, ‘Kasahwa’, going gold.

When colonial rule finally ended in 1980 and the independent state of Zimbabwe was born, she joined the National Dance Company, her mbira accompanying the troupe on international tours.  

In the 1980s Chiweshe moved to Germany, where she married and from where she was able to take her music to an even wider audience, although she later returned to Zimbabwe to establish the Chivanhu Centre, a Shona cultural centre and school in the mountains north of Harare.

Her first international album Ambuya? was released on the Piranha label in 1987 – it was reissued as Ambuya! in 2021 – and was followed by several more. She also recorded radio sessions for John Peel, appeared at WOMAD festivals around the globe, and sometimes performed with her daughter Virginia Mukwesha, whom she taught and who continues Chiweshe’s work as an ambassador and promoter of Shona culture.