Thomas Mapfumo & the Blacks Unlimited
Biography
Thomas Mapfumo & the Blacks Unlimited is a Zimbabwean band led by singer and songwriter Thomas Mapfumo.
Beginning in the late 1970s, Mapfumo developed his mbira pop sound with guitarists Jonah Sithole and Leonard ‘Picket’ Chiyangwa, bassist Charles Makokova, and others. Mapfumo’s lyrics reflected the then concerns of hardships in the rural areas, young men heading into the bush to fight, and a rising sense of indignation at white rulers who had systematically devalued Shona culture for several generations. The guerilla fighters had taken the name chimurenga, Shona for struggle, and Mapfumo decided to call his new sound ‘chimurenga music’.
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In 1980, Robert Mugabe was elected president of the new nation of Zimbabwe and that same year, Thomas Mapfumo & the Blacks Unlimited shared the stage in Salisbury (subsequently named Harare) with Bob Marley and the Wailers.
In the late 1980s, the band began to tour internationally, and made recordings for Chris Blackwell’s Mango Records, Corruption (1989) and Chamunorwa (1990).
Many more albums followed.
Mapfumo moved to Eugene, Oregon, in the USA in the late 1990s.
In April 2018 Mapfumo played his first concert in Harare for 15 years.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.