SOAS Public Music Research Seminar Series: Hearing the Spirits of the Dead as the Theorists of the Living in Zimbabwe

The SOAS Public Music Research Seminar Series is a valuable forum for ethnomusicology and related fields in London, bringing rising and established scholars to share innovative music research with SOAS audiences.

Abstract

In this talk, Tony Perman asks how our understanding of Ndau ceremonial life in Zimbabwe changes if spirits themselves are prioritized as the most authoritative social theorists and thinkers. 

Like many sacred African practices, Ndau religion has typically been studied from disciplinary perspectives embedded within Eurocentric histories of colonialism, including ethnomusicology, in which spirits provide “data” for outside analysis. Further, how compatible are these Afrocentric theoretical foundations (such as ubuntu) with more widely established philosophical traditions like phenomenology. Can indigenous theories rescue philosophy and social theory from their colonial complicity? 

This seminar demonstrates how the lessons learned from spirits as dynamic social theorists can be used more broadly if we heed Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s call to de-provincialize indigenous theories and consider cross-cultural philosophical conversations. In rural Ndau communities, where locals rely upon a diverse community of “outsider” spirits, the spirits help people unsettle the boundaries between identities, languages, heritage, and even race categories. What lessons can they provide beyond Zimbabwe’s borders to those who learn to listen?

Speaker

Tony Perman (ethnomusicology) is a specialist in the music of Zimbabwe and the semiotics of music and emotion. He has received degrees from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (PhD), SOAS University of London (MMus), and Kenyon College (BA). 

His monograph Signs of the Spirit: Music and the Experience of Meaning in Ndau Ceremonial Life and edited volume Music Making Community were published by the University of Illinois Press in 2020 and 2024. He has written previously about mbira music, aesthetics, religious experience, and popular music in Zimbabwe in Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, The Journal of Musicological Research, The Journal of Religion in Africa, African Music, African Studies Review, Open Access Musicology and other edited volumes. 

He has played and taught the mbira dzavadzimu and mbira dzaVaNdau for many years, having been taught primarily by Chartwell Dutiro, Tute Chigamba, Musekiwa Chingodza, Davison Masiza, Zivanai Khumbula, and Solomon Madhinga.

Attendance

Events on the series are free to attend, public, and are available via Zoom 

• ID: 987 3135 9111​
• Password: MgmE808yH5)

Image: Fey Marin (Unsplash)