Mabasa by Thomas Mapfumo & The Blacks Unlimited

Thomas Mapfumo & The Blacks Unlimited – Mabasa the album by Zimbabwean artist Thomas Mapfumo, with 6 tracks was released in 1983.

Thomas Tafirenyika Mapfumo, born in 1945 in Marondera, Mashonaland East, Zimbabwe, began his musical career playing covers of American rock and soul music before joining Hallelujah Chicken Run Band, where he began adapting traditional music of the Shona to modern instrumentation and techniques. This process included transcribing the scales and sounds of the mbira to electric guitar.

He invented and popularized Chimurenga music - literally "struggle" in Shona - which was often overtly political. In addition to his modern incarnation of traditional music, his lyrics were sung in Shona. In the late 1970s singing in Shona instead of English was a political statement in and of itself. In Mapfumo's case, it was specifically critical of the white ruling class of Rhodesia. The government, underestimating his popularity, eventually banned his records and imprisoned Mapfumo without charges in 1979. After a series of large protests demanding his release, he was set free three months later.

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