Singing The Walls Down

Join the heaving hundreds singing along with Thomas Mapfumo and you will see, hear, feel how music can be a liberating force. The whoops and cheers for the man they call the Lion of Zimbabwe have broken the quiet of a balmy January night in Mutare, a normally sleepy spread of jacaranda-shaded streets tucked amid the granite outcrops of the country's lush Eastern Highlands. In Queen's Hall, the revelers dance across a floor sticky with spilled lager, lost in the thump of the drums, the brassy blare of the horns and the hypnotic spell of the lyrics. Listen. What you hear...