Patience Munjeri and band Mbira Dziva filled Grover Center Atrium with the sounds of Zimbabwe in their free concert Friday.
William M. Watts, a senior studying environmental biology, simply couldn’t resist moving to the earthly rhythms and melodies echoing in Grover Center Atrium.
At a free concert Friday, Zimbabwe virtuoso mbira player, Patience Munjeri and the band Mbira Dziva serenaded Watts and other guests to the sounds of traditional and spiritual music of Zimbabwe culture.
“Her performance was really unique and very skillful,” Watt said. “She’s very good at the mbira. I like African music and music that has African roots.”
Dozens of students, faculty and community members gathered in the building’s central space for food and conversation to kick off the new academic year for Ohio University’s African Studies and International Studies programs.
Munjeri opened her performance with a euphoric harmony that compelled Lanina Smith, a sophomore studying biochemistry, to forget her troubles and worries that she faced so far in the semester.
“It was more of a relaxing thing and with everything on you the first week of school, it’s nice,” Smith said. “It’s excitable. It’s happy. It’s calm all at the same time.”
Attendees were grooving to the spirits as they sang, danced and clapped along to the twinkling sensations Munjeri and Mbira Dziva produced.
Julie McCarthy, a senior studying linguistics, said some of those moments were the best part of her night.
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“My favorite part was seeing how excited everyone was getting and how pumped the music was,” McCarthy said.
Throughout the concert, Munjeri tributed homage to her culture by explaining the significance of her dandelion-colored drum, which she said is used to call “ancestral spirits.”
“The instrument is called a mbira. It’s inside a gourd, called a deze,” Tom Melkonian, a member from California duo Mbira Dziva said. “That’s a resonator, it makes the sound louder. It makes it sound better.”
Melkonian expressed a deeper connection to the music and culture.
“I’ve been into it about 25 years,” he said chuckling. “A Zimbabwean music teacher, Dumi, was visiting Santa Cruz. He was responsible for spreading the music to a lot of people. The same people who play the mbira, play the marimba. So I started with the marimba which led me to the mbira.”
He continued to articulate his relation to Munjeri, who also teaches religion and history at a high school in her hometown of Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe.
“It was through the community of Zimbabwe music fans on the West Coast. Patience and I, we met because we both were interested in the music and she was a teacher.”
The concert’s final song was dedicated to the few remaining audience members, whose faces beamed with excitement and adventure.
“Here is a special song for you all who are just a week old and new to this school,” Munjeri said. “It’s called, 'Marenjae,' which means welcome, and it’s especially for you.”
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