Mbira Centre avails instruments

Entertainment Reporter
In its campaign to have traditional mbira integrated into the country’s education system, the Mbira Centre will today officially hand over to the Culture Fund of Zimbabwe and the EU delegation 50 mbiras and 50 mbira resonators commissioned for manufacture and distribution in The Mbira Centre’s “Mbira in Schools” Project.
The 50 mbiras are the first batch of mbiras under the association agreement between The Mbira Centre and the Culture Fund- European Union Partnership for Arts and Culture Development Program.

A further 50 mbiras and resonators will be available to the project before the end of the first quarter of 2015. This is the largest number of mbiras that the EU-CF partnership has commissioned the Mbira Centre to produce.

“In the interests of fairness and transparency, the mbiras will be given out in batches of five or 10, to schools with the most convincing argument for being given the mbiras. We are looking for schools that will follow through and show realistic promise for planting sustainable mbira projects in their schools,” said the Mbira Centre’s director Albert Chimedza. He said the call and selection will be made during Mbira Month, a month- long Mbira Centre initiative aimed at raising mbira awareness and appreciation in Zimbabwe and abroad during the month of September. Mbira Month 2014 will be the 3rd Edition of the event.

“We believe that the best way to maintain and develop our culture is by making sure that the future generations are exposed to it in formal educational environments from an early age. To this end, we have appealed to all sectors of the Zimbabwean society to embrace this cause. I am glad that CF and EU heeded our call and demonstrated their belief in our objectives by commissioning the manufacture of a hundred mbiras. We are also appreciative of the fact that this commission has created new jobs in the mbira community,” Chimedza said.

The handover ceremony to representatives of the EU and Culture Fund starts at 9.30am at the Mbira Centre and will be witnessed by invited guests from Government, the arts sector, the diplomatic and the business community.