Asserting Identity Through Mbira

“[…] the toddler who sits in [a] chair blasting a rigid mbira in his meticulous hands[…]” The use of ‘blasting’ got me perched on my chair as I scrambled to click on the article to check out what this kid was doing to this “rigid mbira”. Images of Garikai Tirikoti or his sons immediately popped into my mind because of their playing style that I consider ‘blasting the mbira’. I was in a for a disappointment and yet I felt elated all the same. The kid wasn’t ‘blasting a rigid mbira’. Rather, he was tinkering around for the sake of the video not as part of the music. I was happy all the same. Here is the video. It’s a song by Aaron Manatsa and the Green Arrows dedicated to his wife Chipo. Despite the boy not blasting the mbira, I think the mbira here is an assertion of the identity of the musician and kid! I’ll leave you to guess what identity they are trying to assert.