Connecting You To The Wider World of Mbira

Selected Articles, Downloads, Books & More:

There's masses of useful information here. All entries have been sorted loosely by type, except for prolific mbira researchers who have their own sections further down the page.

Some of the advanced papers are quite analytical - take your time with those, and come back if/when you're ready for more!

Please help

If something is missing, or a link has expired, please update me. Even better - use the title as a search entry into google, scroll until you find a working link, and mail me with it at mbiramagic (@) gmail.com

Thank you - this kind of help serves everyone!

Note: some high-value links to lost material will remain here in bold as an ongoing invitation to help re-discover it.

Learning Mbira

For Beginners

• Getting Started with Mbira dzaVadzimu B Michael Williams - read his 'Nzira Ye Mbira' feature and find out about his other resources Here. 

Next steps:

• Learning Mbira, A Beginning

• MbiraTab series

• Traditional Mbira Scores of Luken Pasipamire

For Teachers in Schools

• Mbiras, Marimbas, and You: Zimbabwean Music for the General Music Classroom Sarah J. Bartolome

Advanced Papers / Writings / Mbira Making

• The Game of Mbira Adrian Wagner

• The Art of Mbira Playing / Die Kunst des mbira-Spiels Gerd Grupe

• Portrait of an Innovator: Garikayi Tirikoti and His Mbira Orchestra Curtis Andrews

• The Soul of Mbira Twenty Years On: A Retrospect John Chernoff

• "Mbira" N. Scott Robinson - Note: this article contains an exhaustive bibliography and discography

• Richard Selman wrote a chapter called Making Shona Mbira for the book Making Lamellophones once available here: https://barthopkin.com/books-cds/making-lamellaphones/ Now out of print - look out for second-hand copies on other sites!

Prolific Mbira Researchers

Andrew Tracey

• The Family of the Mbira: The Evidence of the Tuning Plans - https://share.google/qPjba9d91TwX50fHU

• The Matepe Music of Rhodesia - https://inetbase.pt/files/original/048fe24ce462f9772f42edfbe1fc49cd05274332.pdf or The Matepe Mbira Music of Rhodesia

• The System of Mbira - https://www.scribd.com/document/863234578/Wynlib-Journal-Manager-Pages-From-African-Music-Vol-10-No-1-8-1

• How to Play The Mbira (Dza Vadzimu) - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/yearbook-of-the-international-folk-music-council/article/abs/andrew-tracey-how-to-play-the-mbira-dza-vadzimu-roodepoort-south-africa-the-international-library-of-african-music-1970-25-pp/BE603029EF1977A0040D91B2C6EFA090

• The tuning of Mbira reeds: a contribution to the craft of Mbira making - https://journal.ru.ac.za/index.php/africanmusic/article/view/1440

Martin Scherzinger

• Fractal Geometries of an African Music

• Negotiating the Music-Theory/African-Music Nexus

• Phantom Patterns (interview)

Paul Berliner

• An Account of John Kunaka Making Mbira here: https://www.scribd.com/document/765471767/John-Kunaka-Mbira-Maker

• Advice in the final chapters of ‘The Soul of Mbira’ book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Soul-Mbira-Traditions-People-Zimbabwe/dp/0226043797