Happy new year! This episode launches a multi-part series devoted to two styles of Zimbabwean music: mbira and Chimurenga. Mbira music is an acoustic, improvised music with sacred and healing qualities that is played on instruments of the same name. The music is listed on the "Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity." Chimurenga music adapts mbira music to electric instruments and fuses it with other global pop and rock styles. The music is associated with the Zimbabwean liberation war in the 1970s and 1980s. In this first episode, we'll hear and learn more about both styles and briefly set these musics in context.