

Kyker illumines how audiences and performers collaborate to make meaning. Informed by two decades of intimate engagement with Zimbabwean music and religion, Kyker's study offers the first sustained examination of Oliver Mtukudzi's oeuvre, and reveals the rich political literacies at work in local and diasporic practices of listening. The results of such a wealth of interviews and interactions with a range of participants in Mtukuzdi's career as well as Mtukudzi himself are richly evident not only in the main text but in the 'dialogue boxes' of selections from interviews and other materials thoughtfully provided at the end, along with several appendices and a photo gallery. Kyker has dedicated many months of tireless on-site research in Zimbabwe and internationally to provide this kind of loving detail.
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This is an excellent expanded professional biography of Oliver Mtukudzi, the famous Zimbabwean popular band leader, composer, and troubadour. Kyker has created a thoroughly fascinating book. While it does take a mostly chronological journey through Tuku's story, it uses his life and music as a jumping-off point to talk about the role of music across various facets of Zimbabwean social life and history. With this book, Kyker gives an account of Mtukudzi's musical life, but to call it a biography would be misleading. Interviews with family, friends, and band members make this a penetrating, sensitive, and uplifting biography of one of the world's most popular musicians. By reading Mtukudzi's life in connection with his lyrics and the social milieu in which they were created, Kyker offers an engaging portrait of one of African music's most recognized performers. With unprecedented access to Mtukudzi, Kyker breaks down his distinctive performance style using the Shona concept of "hunhu," or human identity through moral relationships, as a framework. Kyker looks at Mtukudzi's life and art, from his encounters with Rhodesian soldiers during the Zimbabwe war of liberation to his friendship with American blues artist Bonnie Raitt.

One of a handful of artists to have a beat named after him, Mtukudzi blends Zimbabwean traditional sounds with South African township music and American gospel and soul, to compose what is known as Tuku Music. Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi, a Zimbabwean guitarist, vocalist, and composer, has performed worldwide and released some 50 albums.
