Musician Zwa pushes Zimbabwean music into new territory

UNITED Kingdom-based Zimbabwean musician Tafadzwa “Zwa” Gapara is redefining how audiences encounter African music with her latest project, The Overloaded Mind, an immersive audio-visual experience that premiered in Leicester on last Saturday.

Rather than placing herself before an audience on a conventional concert stage, the Mpopoma-born artiste invited people to step inside her musical world through a 360-degree experience combining original music, movement, visuals and immersive technology.

For Zwa, the project represents both a creative departure and an opportunity to explore the relationship between music, emotion and wellbeing.

“On Saturday, 5 September 2026, I finally presented The Overloaded Mind, my immersive 360-degree audio-visual experience, to an audience in Leicester. After months of composing, recording, filming, developing the visuals and bringing all the technical elements together, it was an incredibly special moment to finally see people enter the space and experience something that had existed as an idea for such a long time,” she reflected.

About 45 people attended the Leicester presentation, which Zwa described as a pilot and proof of concept for a project she hopes will eventually travel internationally.

The experience explores how an ordinary, busy mind can gradually become overwhelmed by thoughts, responsibilities, memories and emotions before eventually finding space for reflection, release and calm.

Zwa deliberately designed the musical journey to mirror this progression.

The composition begins with the energy of everyday life, drawing strongly from her Zimbabwean musical heritage.

“I wanted it to have the energy of normal life – rhythmic, joyful, busy and communal,” she said.

That initial energy gradually becomes more complex as additional sounds and musical ideas compete for attention, eventually creating a sense of pressure before the composition moves towards release and calm.

At the heart of the soundtrack are traditional Zimbabwean instruments and vocal traditions, with marimba, mbira and singing forming the foundation of the work.

The music draws from Shona and Ndebele styles, African group singing and contemporary digital production, creating a meeting point between Zimbabwean musical heritage and modern technology.

Zimbabwean producer Trust Samende played a key role in transforming Zwa’s composition into the finished soundtrack through production, mixing and mastering.

The visual experience was equally important. Installed inside an immersive dome, the project surrounded audiences with a 360-degree environment while keeping movement performer Tamia Rex at the centre of the visual story.

Zwa said she did not want Rex merely to dance alongside the music, but to physically interpret what the composition was communicating.

“As the composition developed, her movement communicated the emotional journey within it,” Zwa said.

Rex represented the energy of ordinary life, the accumulation of pressure, the intensity of becoming overwhelmed and, eventually, the movement towards release and calm.

For her, this offered a way of expressing internal experiences that can be difficult to articulate verbally.

“The dome creates the space. The visuals create the immersive environment. But the music and the person expressing that music carry the emotional journey,” she said.

The project brought together creatives from Zimbabwe, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Sydney Gapara worked on the immersive creative technology, while Thato S. Nhlapo developed the 360-degree dome visuals. Gift Marovatsanga provided facilitation and rehearsal support, while Rex brought the emotional narrative to life through movement.

The Leicester presentation also gave Zwa an opportunity to test the concept with a live audience.

Guests arrived from around 1pm and were welcomed with drinks and packs before moving into the sports hall where the immersive dome had been installed. Because of the dome’s capacity, audiences experienced the work in groups of approximately 20.

Fresh Within sponsored the welcome experience and packs and gave a presentation about its work and connection to wellbeing.

Audience feedback subsequently provided an encouraging picture of the project’s potential.

Seventeen people completed the post-event survey. While 16 described themselves as curious before entering the experience, their responses afterwards were more varied, with 10 describing themselves as reflective, six emotionally moved, six hopeful and five calmer.

Some participants also reported feeling overwhelmed or unsettled – a response Zwa welcomed as evidence that the work was allowing people to bring their own experiences and emotions into the space rather than prescribing a single interpretation.

Significantly, 82 percent of respondents said the journey from mental overload towards calm was clear or very clear.

Music and sound emerged as the most influential element, selected by 13 of the 17 respondents, followed by the 360-degree visuals, selected by 12, and movement/performance, selected by eight.

A further 88 percent said they would definitely or probably recommend the experience to someone else.

For Zwa, those findings reinforced her belief that the project has room to grow.

Her interest in the relationship between music, emotion and wellbeing has developed over several years. A trained healthcare musician, she has worked in community, educational and medical environments and explored music therapy during her undergraduate research.

She studied Music and Musicology at Midlands State University and trained at Music Crossroads, developing into a multi-instrumentalist proficient in mbira, marimba, guitar and recorder.

Her career has also taken her onto international stages. She has performed as part of the Grammy-winning Soweto Gospel Choir and currently sings with the EAGA Gospel Choir in the UK. She has collaborated with Zimbabwean artistes including Albert Nyathi, Amavithikazi and Lelo Langa.

At home, she led Christian music group Second Chance, whose debut project, The Summon, was released in 2023.

Zwa has also made her mark as an educator. She became the first Zimbabwean female marimba specialist at Zimfest, conducting workshops across the United States between 2019 and March 2022.

Her teaching and community work has included the College of Creative Arts Africa, as well as music therapy and education initiatives in Bulawayo involving the Sandra Jones Centre and the You Have It In You Foundation.

Now based in Leicester, she is bringing those experiences together in The Overloaded Mind.

The project is ultimately an attempt to demonstrate that traditional African music does not have to remain confined to familiar presentation formats.

By placing mbira, marimba and African vocal traditions within a technologically driven immersive environment, Zwa is creating a contemporary platform through which global audiences can encounter Zimbabwean culture.

The Leicester premiere, however, is only the beginning. Zwa intends to refine the experience using audience feedback before developing it into a production that can be licensed to venues and organisations internationally.

Her long-term vision is for The Overloaded Mind to travel across borders through partnerships with venues, arts organisations and institutions interested in immersive storytelling and wellbeing.

Yet amid the ambition to take the production to the world, Zwa says one principle must remain central: technology should never overshadow the human story.

For her, September 5 was not the conclusion of the project, but the moment when an idea finally became tangible for an audience.

“We actually did it. Leicester was the beginning. The vision is for The Overloaded Mind to travel much further,” she continued. – Follow on X @MbuleloMpofu