We have a pair of tickets to give a way to the performance on Saturday. The first reader to respond to the question by sending an email with the correct answer to family@duttyartz.com (and make sure you include the word contest in the subject line) wins the pair of tickets.

The ticket contest is OVER! The contest question was what does “mapfumo” means in shona? Answer = “spears”

NORA CHIPAUMIRE + THOMAS MAPFUMO & THE BLACKS UNLIMITED
May 21 & 22 at 8pm
Kumble Theater at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus

Click here to view the embedded video.

More from the 651 ARTS site;

This work takes on an Africa in conversation with itself, asking difficult questions and celebrating its achievements and humanity. lions will roar… is a visual, aural and kinesthetic equivalent of Africa’s great cities: Kinshasa, Johannesburg, Dakar and Lagos — cities full of life, contradictions, grace, defiance and power. Featuring dancers Chipaumire and Souleymane Badolo of Burkina Faso, with original music performed live by Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited.

lions will roar… is funded by New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project (NDP), with generous support by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the MetLife Community Connections Fund of the MetLife Foundation.

Additional funding by Creative Capital, The Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Arts Production Fund, The National Endowment for the Arts, and a Choreographic Fellowship from The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC). Commissioned and presented as part of 651 ARTS’ Black Dance: Tradition and Transformation program, primarily funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Presented in association with Dance Theater Workshop.

This program is part of “Black Brooklyn Renaissance” presented by Brooklyn Arts Council, in partnership with Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation.

Thomas Mapfumo & The Acid Band – Hwa-Hwa

In Harare, Zimbabwe (or what at the time was known as Salisbury, Zimbabwe Rhodesia) — sometime in the middle of the 1970s, Thomas Mapfumo stopped playing covers of American rock and soul (music by Elvis Presley, Bobby Darrin, Mick Jagger, etc.) He began singing in shona, and transcribing the sounds of the mbira (chief instrument for traditional Shona music) to the electric guitar. His lyrics became overtly political, in support of the revolutionary movement in the rural parts of the country. The white minority Rhodesians/ruling population, which was brutally suppressing voices of dissent, didn’t catch on due to their lack of understanding of the native language/culture until 1978 when Thomas Mapfumo released the song “Hokoyo,” which means “Watch Out!” in Shona, and Mapfumo was eventually arrested and jailed. “Hokoyo” became a regional hit in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The song “Hwa-Hwa” is from Thomas Mapfumo’s first full-length, also titled Hokoyo! –first time available in the US thanks to Water.

A few years back, Rupture wrote about and posted some Mapfumo tracks, especially digging his 1980s catalog. Thomas Mapfumo made most of his albums in the 1980s and ’90s, releasing politically charged music, criticizing Robert Mugabe’s government for its gross human rights abuse and torture/beating and killing of opposition party candidates and supporters. Mapfumo was exiled from Zimbabwe in the 1990s. He now lives in Oregon, still making music and touring internationally.