music clip of the day

Zimbabwe

The music is as sweet as the news is bleak.

Zimbabwe College of Music Mbira Ensemble (with Thanda Richardson, vocals), live, Harare (Mannenberg Jazz Club), 2/17/08

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Mbira Dzenharira, “Saramugomo,” 2001

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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SMG Young Stars, Kenge Art, Mutubambile Orphan Choir with Oliver Mtukudzi, Magariro Edu Marimba Band

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

reading table

. . . [Robert Mugabe’s] regime . . . has lost all its moral bearings, a gang of thieves and murderers bent on holding power at any cost. The book draws to a close with the testimony of Emmanuel Chiroto, a Harare opposition leader whose campaign for mayor has brought down the wrath of Mugabe’s goons. Even as he is celebrating his victory, members of the youth militia set his house on fire and abduct his wife, Abigail, and 4-year-old son. The boy is released, but Abigail’s swollen and battered corpse is found in the morgue. “This is my lovely wife,” Chiroto tells Godwin, holding up a cellphone image of Abigail in her wedding dress. “And they killed her.” Three years after his defeat at the polls, Mugabe still clings to power in his ruined nation. But Godwin’s intrepid reportage has at least given voice to some of his victims.

—Joshua Hammer, New York Times Book Review, 3/27/11 (review of The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe by Peter Godwin)

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sight seen

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, sitting on a brick sidewalk in Harvard Square, a panhandler with a large sign:

Seeking Human Kindness