MUKWA LIVE

Mukwa is an ensemble featuring Australian musicians Djulz Chambers and Cam Norton (mbira), Ghanaian-Australian multi-instrumentalist Odai Affotey and Zimbabwean-Australian musician Joyful Phiri (mbira/vocals). We invite you to join us at this special intimate concert in the heart of St Kilda, to experience traditional mbira songs and the music they have inspired in us.

The Mbira Dzavadzimu ("voice of the ancestors", or "mbira of the ancestral spirits") is an instrument that originated with the Shona people of Zimbabwe. In its conception it was regarded as a sacred technology utilised in ceremonial contexts, offering a medium through which the human and ancestral realms could communicate. Though the context of Mbira playing has changed through the passage of time, when played thoughtfully and in accordance with the musical tradition from whence it came it holds still the power to heal and invoke a meditative mood through its distinctive and unusual tonal arrangements.