by LaRay Denzer, PAS Editor, Newsletter and working papers
COVID-19 claimed the life of mbira virtuoso Cosmas Magaya of Zimbabwe on July 10. He was 66 years old. Magaya was a key player in the famous mbira ensemble Mhuri yekwa Rwizi and performed for Shona religious ceremonies as well as on the worldwide concert stage. In the years following his first US visit (sponsored by the Oregon-based Kutsinhira Cultural Arts Center) in the early 1990s, Magaya made many return trips to the US for performances, workshops, and university residencies. He was a collaborator with ethnomusicologist Paul Berliner, who was a Northwestern faculty member for many years before moving to Duke University. Magaya’s first trip to Northwestern was in 1999 as a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities. In 2000 and 2001 he returned to take up a teaching and research residency and then a post as artist in residence, which led to a Zimbabwean music performance series on campus. During another stint as artist in residence, in 2004, he participated in the Herskovits Library jubilee celebration. Magaya performed several times at Chicago’s World Music Festival. He was also a regular visitor at Duke, where he continued his collaboration with Berliner over two decades. In Zimbabwe, Magaya farmed, served several times as village headman, and directed Nhimbe for Progress, a non-profit organization that focused on rural development and emergency relief. Magaya first gained international recognition in the 1970s, appearing on the albums The Soul of Mbira and Shona Mbira Music, and later on Afamba Apota (2000, with singer and mbira player Beauler Dyoko) and Anoyimba (2002). In 1999 he was part of the first American tour of the Zimbabwe Group Leaders Mbira Ensemble. In the decades that followed, he was an influential figure in the annual North American Zimbabwe Music Festival (Zimfest). Magaya was passionate about preserving and documenting Shona cultural knowledge. His life and artistry are celebrated in Paul Berliner’s book The Art of Mbira: Musical Inheritance and Legacy, released shortly before Magaya’s death and the players’ method book Mbira’s Restless Dance: An Archive of Improvisation, which grew out of Berliner and Magaya’s collaborative research, which came out in 2019.