Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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John Chibadura

  • The Best of John Chibadura [Zimbabwe Music Corporation, 1986] A-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

The Best of John Chibadura [Zimbabwe Music Corporation, 1986]
Born in 1957 and orphaned in 1962, this sprightly guitarist and engaging vocalist grew up hard, as what black man didn't in "Southern Rhodesia"? Totally unschooled, he minded sheep, manned a tractor, then finally moved up to full-fledged lorry driver and urban adventures crowned by music. By the mid '80s, with Mugabe's Zimbabwean revolution not yet devolved into total autocracy, he and his Tembo Brothers band ruled sungura, a Zimbabwean variant of flighty, Tanzania-based East African rumba. Ebulliently escapist as African dance music so often needs to be, sungura filled the niche between Thomas Mapfumo's reggaefied, political chimurenga and the lighter and more accomplished Afropop of the Bhundu Boys, who enjoyed half a decade of international renown before sinking into fates no one would envy. Chibadura himself died in 1999 of the Disease That Cannot Be Named. But for his own decade-plus of stardom, he generated the minor magic showcased here. When I was encouraged to play music straight off my phone's speaker instead of through earphones for the two days I spent in a Little Rock hospital room, it proved the special favorite of every nurse I asked. A-