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Oliver Mtukudzi And The Black Spirits: globalFEST 2013

GlobalFEST is a great place to discover young new talent, but occasionally the producers welcome familiar friends to their party. This year, it was Zimbabwe's Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi, who has been an African musical icon since the late 1970s and brought that sense of homecoming to GlobalFEST with his band The Black Spirits. With his sweet acoustic guitar and husky voice, Mtukudzi gave a lilting and gorgeous performance that evoked traditional Zimbabwean sounds like those of an mbira thumb piano, but filtered them through an accessible, guitar-centered aesthetic.

Set List

  • "Dzandimomotera"
  • "Hear Me Lord"
  • "Ziwere"
  • "Mutsverendende"
  • "Muchatuta"
  • Credits

    Producers: Mito Habe-Evans, Bob Boilen; Videographers: Gabriella Garcia-Pardo, Mito Habe-Evans; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Video Editor/Assistant Producer: Denise DeBelius; Special Thanks to: Webster Hall, globalFEST 2013; Executive Producers: Anya Grundmann, Keith Jenkins.

    Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    Anastasia Tsioulcas is a reporter on NPR's Arts desk. She is intensely interested in the arts at the intersection of culture, politics, economics and identity, and primarily reports on music. Recently, she has extensively covered gender issues and #MeToo in the music industry, including backstage tumult and alleged secret deals in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against megastar singer Plácido Domingo; gender inequity issues at the Grammy Awards and the myriad accusations of sexual misconduct against singer R. Kelly.