The album companion to Banning Eyre’s groundbreaking history, the only complete overview of this crucial African music career, featuring several rarities.

There is nothing like a concert by Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited at home in Zimbabwe. The music is mesmerizing and ecstatic, and the crowd simply can’t get enough. The band would start around 8:30 p.m. and rarely wind up before 3:30 in the morning. Fans would flock and stay all night, dancing the band’s deep grooves and meditating on Mapfumo’s voice booming with ancient wisdom and street-smart moral authority. From the mid-1970s up until Mapfumo went into exile in 2004, this experience was a major feature of life for many Zimbabweans. The Mapfumo experience also lies at the heart of this African nation’s remarkable and troubled history.

Mapfumo, the Lion of Zimbabwe, stands beside Fela Kuti, Youssou N’Dour and Franco as one of Africa’s greatest and most consequential composer/bandleaders. For over 40 years, he has merged ancient African traditions—especially that of the sacred, metal-pronged Shona mbira—into the currents of international music, from rock to reggae to rap. Mapfumo’s artfully barbed lyrics have targeted the racist regime of Ian Smith and the corrupt one of Robert Mugabe with equal resolve and courage. That’s the essence of chimurenga—the music of struggle: past, present and future

This album is the audio companion to the book Lion Songs: Thomas Mapfumo and the Music That Made Zimbabwe (Duke University Press; album release: May 5, 2015) by Banning Eyre, a deep exploration of music and history and a compelling read. Eyre first visited Zimbabwe and met Mapfumo in 1988. Since then, he has enjoyed a 27-year friendship with the artist, his family and musicians. Eyre has performed on guitar and played on Mapfumo recordings, and become deeply familiar with the inner workings of Mapfumo’s band, the Blacks Unlimited. Eyre has visited Zimbabwe four times, including a six-month stay in 1997-98, during which he moved through the country with the band, attending and participating in some 75 shows.

Eyre got to know Mapfumo’s fans informally. He also conducted interviews with musicians, band members, Mapfumo family members, DJs, writers, journalists, and of course, the man himself, many times and in many locations and circumstances. All this and a great deal of archive and book research go into Lion Songs, an absolutely unique work in the literature of African music.

But as the book was completed, Eyre considered Mapfumo’s large catalog of recordings and saw a problem. The albums and singles cover a span of over 40 years. Some are out of print or hard to find. Some were never released outside Zimbabwe. There are useful compilations, but each focuses on a particular period. Not one conveys the entire sweep of Mapfumo’s creative evolution, capturing the energy of the early guitar-based experimentation, notably the groundbreaking guitar innovations of Jonah Sithole, Joshua Dube, Ephraim Karimaura and others, then the richness of the large band—featuring three mbiras, two guitars and a brass section—in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, also the energy of a live Mapfumo show, and the complex recordings the maestro has created during his decade-long exile in Oregon. An album that captures all of that was needed, so Eyre decided to make it.

The Lion Songs CD is unusual in another way. In the spirit of Bob Marley’s Talking Blues album, Eyre decided to include short excerpts from interviews with Mapfumo over the years. These clips both dramatize Mapfumo’s political and creative journey, and give an insight into his personality, passion and humor in a way nothing else can. Mapfumo’s deeply resonant voice is, in its way, as musical as the songs themselves.

The 14 songs in this collection were recorded between 1973 and 2010. The set begins with “Ngoma Yarira,” one of the first truly successful popular adaptations of Shona mbira music. The song was a hit for the Hallelujah Chicken Run band, and a crucial turning point for Mapfumo’s art. The album continues with a number of “chimurenga singles,” war-era songs that helped to stiffen the resolve of the guerrilla fighters in the bush. These include the original 1977 Acid Band version of “Pamuromo Chete (It’s Only Talk),” a piquant retort to Rhodesia’s final prime minister, Ian Smith, who wrongly predicted the longevity of white rule. This track has never before been released internationally.

The 1980s was an extremely fertile period for Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited, yielding songs that giddily celebrate Zimbabwe’s independence, as well as foreboding warnings of danger to the young nation, and ultimately an outright condemnation of the Mugabe regime in the 1989 classic, “Corruption.” Blacks Unlimited songs from the ‘90s showcase the mbira-enhanced band, and stress Mapfumo’s insistence that his fellow citizens not abandon their ancestral culture, but rather find ways to integrate it into their contemporary lives.

Mapfumo’s early 21^st century songs critique the Zimbabwean government’s disastrous land policy and lament the pain of separation that exile has imposed on him, his family and musicians. In all, this unique CD offers a grand tour through the work of one of the most powerful, creative and storied musical artists Africa has ever produced.

Compiled by Banning Eyre

To order the book Lion Songs, visit banningeyre.com/lionsongs. For more Mapfumo music and news, visit thomas-mapfumo.com.

The album companion to Banning Eyre’s groundbreaking history, the only complete overview of this crucial African music career, featuring several rarities.

There is nothing like a concert by Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited at home in Zimbabwe. The music is mesmerizing and ecstatic, and the crowd simply can’t get enough. The band would start around 8:30 p.m. and rarely wind up before 3:30 in the morning. Fans would flock and stay all night, dancing the band’s deep grooves and meditating on Mapfumo’s voice booming with ancient wisdom and street-smart moral authority. From the mid-1970s up until Mapfumo went into exile in 2004, this experience was a major feature of life for many Zimbabweans. The Mapfumo experience also lies at the heart of this African nation’s remarkable and troubled history.

Mapfumo, the Lion of Zimbabwe, stands beside Fela Kuti, Youssou N’Dour and Franco as one of Africa’s greatest and most consequential composer/bandleaders. For over 40 years, he has merged ancient African traditions—especially that of the sacred, metal-pronged Shona mbira—into the currents of international music, from rock to reggae to rap. Mapfumo’s artfully barbed lyrics have targeted the racist regime of Ian Smith and the corrupt one of Robert Mugabe with equal resolve and courage. That’s the essence of chimurenga—the music of struggle: past, present and future

This album is the audio companion to the book Lion Songs: Thomas Mapfumo and the Music That Made Zimbabwe (Duke University Press; album release: May 5, 2015) by Banning Eyre, a deep exploration of music and history and a compelling read. Eyre first visited Zimbabwe and met Mapfumo in 1988. Since then, he has enjoyed a 27-year friendship with the artist, his family and musicians. Eyre has performed on guitar and played on Mapfumo recordings, and become deeply familiar with the inner workings of Mapfumo’s band, the Blacks Unlimited. Eyre has visited Zimbabwe four times, including a six-month stay in 1997-98, during which he moved through the country with the band, attending and participating in some 75 shows.

Eyre got to know Mapfumo’s fans informally. He also conducted interviews with musicians, band members, Mapfumo family members, DJs, writers, journalists, and of course, the man himself, many times and in many locations and circumstances. All this and a great deal of archive and book research go into Lion Songs, an absolutely unique work in the literature of African music.

But as the book was completed, Eyre considered Mapfumo’s large catalog of recordings and saw a problem. The albums and singles cover a span of over 40 years. Some are out of print or hard to find. Some were never released outside Zimbabwe. There are useful compilations, but each focuses on a particular period. Not one conveys the entire sweep of Mapfumo’s creative evolution, capturing the energy of the early guitar-based experimentation, notably the groundbreaking guitar innovations of Jonah Sithole, Joshua Dube, Ephraim Karimaura and others, then the richness of the large band—featuring three mbiras, two guitars and a brass section—in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, also the energy of a live Mapfumo show, and the complex recordings the maestro has created during his decade-long exile in Oregon. An album that captures all of that was needed, so Eyre decided to make it.

The Lion Songs CD is unusual in another way. In the spirit of Bob Marley’s Talking Blues album, Eyre decided to include short excerpts from interviews with Mapfumo over the years. These clips both dramatize Mapfumo’s political and creative journey, and give an insight into his personality, passion and humor in a way nothing else can. Mapfumo’s deeply resonant voice is, in its way, as musical as the songs themselves.

The 14 songs in this collection were recorded between 1973 and 2010. The set begins with “Ngoma Yarira,” one of the first truly successful popular adaptations of Shona mbira music. The song was a hit for the Hallelujah Chicken Run band, and a crucial turning point for Mapfumo’s art. The album continues with a number of “chimurenga singles,” war-era songs that helped to stiffen the resolve of the guerrilla fighters in the bush. These include the original 1977 Acid Band version of “Pamuromo Chete (It’s Only Talk),” a piquant retort to Rhodesia’s final prime minister, Ian Smith, who wrongly predicted the longevity of white rule. This track has never before been released internationally.

The 1980s was an extremely fertile period for Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited, yielding songs that giddily celebrate Zimbabwe’s independence, as well as foreboding warnings of danger to the young nation, and ultimately an outright condemnation of the Mugabe regime in the 1989 classic, “Corruption.” Blacks Unlimited songs from the ‘90s showcase the mbira-enhanced band, and stress Mapfumo’s insistence that his fellow citizens not abandon their ancestral culture, but rather find ways to integrate it into their contemporary lives.

Mapfumo’s early 21^st century songs critique the Zimbabwean government’s disastrous land policy and lament the pain of separation that exile has imposed on him, his family and musicians. In all, this unique CD offers a grand tour through the work of one of the most powerful, creative and storied musical artists Africa has ever produced.

Compiled by Banning Eyre

To order the book Lion Songs, visit banningeyre.com/lionsongs. For more Mapfumo music and news, visit thomas-mapfumo.com.