featured Archives - Fired Rock

25Mar

By Onai Mushava1 Comment

Critical Theory

Mebo, Winky D and Karl Marx

A church type from the countryside sneaks out of Zupco, his place in life disagreeably summarised by the catapult around his neck and the apostolic badge on his pocket. He looks around as if flustered by city lights and is, in fact, soon blown away by one: an uptown sweetheart called Mebo who chooses him over her unimpressed digital-vixen friends. With the rest of story, Obert Chari, the Romeo who got away with treason against the capitalist laws of love, ably debuts atop the National FM 2018 chart and crowns it all with a Nama (2019) Song of the Year nomination. “Mebo” is an instant classic that, along with Winky D’s “MuGarden”, Jah Prayzah’s “Chengetedza” and Pah Chihera’s “Runonzi Rudo” invites us to think anew love and art in a time of alienation. Even if Chari does not sweep the Namas...

Poptain got the right mix

Zimdancehall's newest star, Poptain, brings to the craft a mix of social consciousness, intricate wordplay, effortless cadence and casual patois fluency. The animated lyric video for his latest single, Freedom, may belatedly bring music lovers up to speed with his song writing abilities, but the underrated chanter has been ably grinding underground for half a decade now, with no less than 100 tunes on his discography. While the animation itself is not exactly high-concept — somewhat lacking in life-like coordination and narrative layers — it is an ambitious take and its real value is the invitation to follow Poptain’s emotive, but somewhat demanding punchlines in real time. I had already bumped into the track on repeat myself, but when I watched the lyrics, it dawned on me just how much h...

Zimbabwe to reintroduce Literature Bureau

Aaron Chiundura Moyo, the highly regarded Zimbabwean novelist and television producer, has love-hate memories of the Literature Bureau but pictures it as a potential stimulus for the country’s rundown book sector. Moyo’s from journey a raw village wordsmith to one of the foremost names in Zimbabwean writing started at the Literature Bureau, which operated as the default incubator for writing talent from its inception in 1953 to its closure in 1999. He credits the Literature Bureau, set up within the Native Affairs Department of the Central African Federation to promote writing in indigenous languages, as the midwife of many Ndebele and Shona classics but criticises it for mutating into an instrument of censorship. With the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education bent to the drawing ...