‘Our People Father, They Haven't Learned Yet’: Music and Postcolonial Identities in Zimbabwe, 1980–2000*

Abstract

Zimbabwean musicians have continued to struggle to earn a living and respect decades after ushering the country's independence in song and dance in 1980. What they perceived as the root of their problem – an obstinate neo-colonial cultural disposition deeply etched at the heart of the national ethos – is the subject of this article. Employing the currency of cultural nationalism, the musicians indicted the independence state's failure to appreciate the cultural and economic importance of the country's music. Similarly, they decried what they saw as a wider crisis of national consciousness among Zimbabweans, of which their own predicament as musicians was only one symptom. Thus, this article is a narrative history of Zimbabwean popular musicians and their engagement with the cultural complexities underlying postcolonial identities.