Tanyaradzwa Marabada
THE Zimbabwe Music Rights Association (Zimura)—a collective management organisation with a duty to manage composers’ music rights in the country, the region and internationally— will celebrate mbira music today at the Zimbabwe College of Music in Harare today.
The organisation will contact a workshop with mbira musicians, that will explore teachings on Zimura membership and distribution, intellectual property in music and the licensing processes among other issues, is meant to bring mbira musicians up to speed with the organisation.
“The workshop is based on Mbira musicians because it is a genre that has less membership in Zimura yet there are so many out there. We want to make the mbira music composers understand more about the organisation and its functions including their rights provided for in the Copyright Act,” Zimura executive director, Polisile Ncube-Chimhini, said.
The mbira workshop is part of Zimura’s 40th anniversary celebrations.
“As we are celebrating 40 years of existence, we have lined up a number of activities to celebrate the milestone and these include provincial workshops and concerts among others all meant to raise copyright act awareness. For the mbira workshop, we have realised that it’s more effective doing workshops targeting different genres at a time.”
The Mbira instrument is a heritage for the Shonas and it was popularised overseas by the likes of Dumisani Maraire, Stella Chiweshe, Nyamasvisva and Maungira Enharira among others.
In 2021, the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) considered inscribing the art of crafting and playing mbira on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Zimura compliments efforts of other organisations such as the Mbira Centre that organises the annual Pan African Mbira Festival to promote traditional musical instruments which are on the verge of extinction.