Jennifer Wyatt Kyker

“Sekuru’s Stories” is a digital monograph that offers a first-person account of African musical history from below, tracing a single performer’s journey through experiences of missionization, colonization, labor migration, and independence. The project’s subject is the renowned Zimbabwean mbira player, oral historian, and ritual specialist Sekuru Tute Chigamba. This digital publication frames Sekuru Chigamba’s oral histories through the Shona narrative genre of nhoroondo, a multivalent category that encompasses various ways of recounting the past, including legends and myths, oral accounts of historical events, individual life histories, and written academic narratives. In the process, “Sekuru’s Stories” suggests productive new possibilities for narrating African musical history.