Percussive Notes Review:
Learning Mbira--A Beginning
Elementary
B. Michael Williams
Honey Rock

Learning Mbira--A Beginning is a 101-page instruction book on the art of playing the mbira. Besides its comprehensive written material, two CDs further help one to understand and play the instrument. The book consists of illustrations of various parts and playing positions of the mbira, as well as the tablature/musical examples used including a historical background of each one. There is also a glossary of Shona terms and a resource section, which includes books and articles, recordings, videos, and Internet sources. Learning Mbira--A Beginning is a well-written instruction book on the art of playing the mbira. It also serves as a history book and thus has a twofold educational interest.

Reviewed by: John Beck
Review originally published: June 2002

Contents:

• • Foreword (by Chartwell Dutiro)
• • Author's Bio
• • Author's Note
• • The Mbira
• • Shona Mbira Musical Style
• • Transcriptions/Notations
• • Kariga Mombe
• • Mahororo
• • Nyamaropa
• • Nhemamusasa
• • Kuzanga
• • Taireva
• • Nyamaropa yaChivhanda
• • Bangidza
• • Glossary of Shona Terms
• • Resources (Books & Articles, Recordings, Videos, Internet)

Learning Mbira: A Beginning...
Review by Thomas Preston, EthnoDoxology
    -- B. Michael Williams. Everett, PA: Honeyrock, 2001. 103 pages + 2 CDs.

This welcome addition to the somewhat sporadic body of teach-yourself-mbira writing contains, in the words of Chartwell Dutiro (a master Mbira player and my own teacher on the instrument), “a positive learning device for those without ready access to a master Mbira player” (p. 7). The device he mentions is the numerical tablature system that Williams uses throughout the book as an aid to learning from the printed page without resorting to the twelve-pitch scale.

This system uses a drawing of the Mbira with the keys represented on the page in the order that the player sees them on their instrument. Each is clearly marked with a number. From there, the player simply follows a number pattern and relates it to the keys on the mbira. The result is a far easier and more accessible way of learning this potentially daunting instrument than other, older methods such as the more traditional double stave transcription employed by Andrew Tracey in his 1970 book.1 In fact, when I used Williams’ numerical method, it proved far easier for me to learn songs that appeared in both works.

The book consists of a number of brief sections. After introductions by Chartwell and the author, Williams describes some of the heritage of the instrument and the contexts in which it is played. He then writes briefly on some stylistic aspects of Mbira music (such as cyclic patterns and interlocking parts) and gives practical tips on how to hold the instrument. The main section of the book consists of transcriptions of 8 of the most famous Shona Mbira songs. All transcriptions have a brief song introduction, and are presented first as a transcription in western staff notation and then in the tablature system. Marks are included to indicate alternative starting points, as well as hosho (rattle) beats. The accompanying CDs take the reader/listener through each piece slowly at first, and then at performance speed.

At the end of the book, we are treated to multiple useful lists with a glossary, bibliography, disc- and videography, as well as references to various internet sites. Together these form an impressive resource section for those wanting to take their learning further.

Despite the clarity of the transcriptions and the ease with which players can begin to pick up some of the songs, the book does have a few shortcomings. The most important of these is the lack of cultural contextualization, both generally and in the introductions to each piece. Although Chartwell is right when he says, “let’s all save the creation rather than the tradition” (p. 7), the lack of background information on Shona music seems to me a glaring omission. For example, in the blurb that introduces the song ‘Bangidza’, we are told only that this is “an ancient spiritual song” (p. 85). Ethnomusicologists are keen to emphasize that cultural context is of crucial importance in learning and understanding particular musics. I suspect that the readers of this journal would welcome some more information on the spiritual aspects of these songs in particular.2 Considering that Chartwell himself has always been careful to get this aspect of Mbira music across in our lessons, it is all the more surprising to see it omitted here.

The lack of contextualization may, however, have more to do with the type of audience that Williams wants to reach. Above all, this book is a practical manual for beginner Mbira players who have perhaps heard about or seen the instrument and would like to ‘give it a go.’ In this respect, the book is highly recommended and will prove useful to students and teachers alike. For those of us who want to delve deeper into the wider Mbira world, the bibliography at the end lists plenty to grapple with.

The author writes as the percussion teacher that he is, not as an ethnomusicologist, but he still provides a valuable contribution to the literature with his tablature system. All in all, this is an excellent introduction to one of Africa’s best-known instrumental traditions, especially since it includes 2 CDs with the song parts. Andrew Tracey remarks that in order to learn Shona singing, one must have “personal contact with the art itself.” 3 and although I would extend that to include learning any part of a musical tradition, those interested in the Mbira will find this book to be a good beginning… just as the title says.

Learning Mbira: A Beginning...
Review by Paul Novitski, Dandemutande Magazine

With this book and its two accompanying CDs, Michael Williams endeavors to teach the fundamentals of eight mbira songs (a basic part plus variations) using tablature notation and sample recordings. The basic version of each song is also presented in standard Western musical notation.

Overall, it’s a good physical production. The print is large, the book opens flat, and Williams’ mbira notation is easy to read. The audio examples are slow and easy to follow. For someone without physical access to a teacher, this book is a way to get started, although, as Williams points out, “a real master player (preferably an authentic culture-bearer) must ultimately guide you toward mastery."

The book demonstrates solo parts to songs and makes a mild attempt to describe how to play the classic mbira kushaura/kutsinhira duet, although all of the audio examples are solo. Williams seems to have decided, probably wisely, to leave the complexities of teaching duet playing to in-person lessons with a live instructor.

The audio CDs accompanying the book are adequate, and a much better choice of medium than cassette would have been. I appreciate the full buzzy mbira sound and am glad that no attempt was made to clean it up. For the most part the audio examples seem do their job and provide an easy comparison with one’s attempts to play from the tablature. When playing the slow examples Williams’ pace is sometimes uneven, which might be his personal playing style, and he tends to hesitate between phrases, which might be a deliberate teaching method or perhaps simply symptomatic of the difficulty of playing slowly. His faster examples occasionally sound rushed. Nowhere in the book does he say how long he has played mbira or with whom he has studied, and I would have appreciated that kind of personal perspective, but overall he seems to be someone I’d enjoy playing mbira with should our paths eventually cross.

One of the risks of publishing such snapshots of a living, improvisational music is that students might assume that the one way that’s being presented is the only way or some “standard" way of playing. Williams emphasizes that these annotated mbira parts and the audio examples are indeed examples and shouldn’t be misconstrued as definitive performance. He provides a discography of nearly forty albums of mbira music, most of them by Zimbabweans, and encourages the student to listen to master players for guidance, which surely every passionate student will do. For each of the eight mbira songs presented here, he cites the published transcriptions and recordings that are his sources so that others can follow in his footsteps.

I found myself wishing that Williams hadn’t used the academic writing style in which the author is absent from his own sentences ("this is way it’s done" rather than “this is how I was taught"). That disembodied voice tends to imply that any point being made is universally true rather than local, personal, or idiosyncratic, and I find that implied authority problematic in a tutorial of another culture’s music. Williams describes how to hold the mbira without suggesting there might be other ways (e.g., with all the left fingers along the left side of the soundboard instead of any of them under its bottom edge); he directs us to learn mbira parts first one hand then the other without mentioning the pleasure and insight that can come from learning both hands at once; he says that all mbira huru are laid out the same without mentioning that many Gandanga mbira have that extra key in the lower-left #2 position (consideration of which complicates any numbered-key tablature system such as this). One place he does succeed in conveying a certain realistic fuzziness is in the introduction to each piece where he often cites more than one meaning to a song or its title as heard from various mbira players. I also appreciate the sidebar quotes from mbira players and the extensive resource listings that point to the wonderfully complex world beyond this simple beginning. And he plays the audio examples in a variety of tunings to encourage the student to embrace that diversity.

Williams has kindly directed his proceeds from the sale of this book to MBIRA, the non-profit organization dedicated to helping Zimbabwean musicians.