Overview

The coming-of-age story of a master musician in mid-twentieth century colonial Rhodesia as he learns his community's most cherished art, all while navigating profound social transformation. Ethnomusicologist Paul F. Berliner has been studying Zimbabwean mbira for more than fifty years. When he first arrived in what was then Rhodesia after the nation declared independence from the United Kingdom, he met Cosmas Magaya, a mbira player who would become his teacher and lifelong collaborator. A Prodigy's Calling chronicles the early years of Magaya's life, documenting the master mbira player's journey from child prodigy to established expert. As a child, Magaya was immersed in mbira music through his father's work as a healer and spirit medium. As Magaya grew, so too did his world; his performances extended beyond the family compound as his skill and knowledge increased, bringing him into contact with a society fraught with decolonial conflict. Following Magaya's childhood, readers will learn how his upbringing guided his journey through the community's social networks and how his early sensibilities, proclivities, and talents shaped his development. At the same time, his deepening engagement with music and the ancestors was affected by overlapping tensions between Shona cosmology and Christian ideology, rural and urban lifestyles, and the escalating African nationalist struggle and the white supremacist state. While Magaya's story reflects profound social changes in the nation, it is also a story of musical apprenticeship. Readers following Magaya's discovery of ever finer details in the music's richly layered patterns will enhance their ability to hear mbira music's forms, variations, and sonic qualities. Linocut illustrations by South African artist Lucas Bambo bring the narrative to life, and Berliner's spirited storytelling is accompanied by QR codes that take readers directly to recordings of music as Magaya learns it. Appendices for musicians interested in learning or improving their mbira playing complement the story of Magaya's early life. Inviting the reader into the very tradition it recounts, the book offers intimate insights into the relationships among music, Shona cosmology, and colonial politics in everyday life.

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9780226835174

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Reviews

"""Eminent ethnomusicologist Paul Berliner offers a rigorous and reverent portrait of musical virtuoso Cosmas Magaya, illuminating the art of the mbira, and its soul, while simultaneously telling the tale of a late-colonial society in the throes of profound social and political change. Accompanied by Lucas Bambo’s elegant print images and a host of online musical examples, this book is as artful as it is insightful."" -- Ryan Skinner, The Ohio State University"

"""Eminent ethnomusicologist Paul Berliner offers a rigorous and reverent portrait of musical virtuoso Cosmas Magaya, illuminating the art of the mbira, and its soul, while simultaneously telling the tale of a late-colonial society in the throes of profound social and political change. Accompanied by Lucas Bambo’s elegant print images and a host of online musical examples, this book is as artful as it is insightful."" -- Ryan Skinner, author of 'Bamako Sounds: The Afropolitan Ethics of Malian Music' ""In attentively detailing Cosmas Magaya’s process of musical learning, Berliner teaches us how to listen to and notice what matters most in mbira artistry. Interweaving vivid storytelling and images with poetic and musical accounts of mbira performance and sociality, and set against a backdrop of the tumultuous years leading up to Zimbabwe’s independence, A Prodigy’s Calling is an exquisitely rendered work. It is testament to the deep value of long-term musical and ethnographic collaboration and will set the standard for musical biography."" -- Lila Ellen Gray, author of 'Amália at the Olympia' ""Written with a gentility, clarity, and depth that mirrors the grace with which Mr. Magaya lived his own remarkable life, Berliner’s text honors its subject, infusing the music that has inspired generations of mbira students and scholars with humanity, spirituality, struggle, and triumph. Beautifully centering family and pedagogy, A Prodigy’s Calling is a story of creativity, resilience, and hope amidst the devastation of colonialism and war."" -- Tony Perman, author of 'Signs of the Spirit: Music and the Experience of Meaning in Ndau Ceremonial Life'"

Author Information

Paul F. Berliner is the Arts and Sciences Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Music at Duke University in North Carolina. He is the author of several books, including The Art of Mbira and Mbira’s Restless Dance, also published by the University of Chicago Press.  

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