Featured image by Dennis Johnson Photography
In the middle of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, nudged between a deli and a typical Harlem walk-up, sits The Shrine—a restaurant, nightclub, and music venue dedicated to the celebration of artists and creative types of all backgrounds. On any given Friday, twenty-three year old, Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa, a Zimbabwean musician and recent Princeton graduate can be found on the dance floor, moving to the infectious afro-beats sounds blasting from the DJ booth. However, on this particular Friday, Tawengwa stands on stage, behind a keyboard, surrounded by the three members of her band.
“Tonight, I want you all to join me on a journey,” she said. “And unleash your love.” Standing under a flurry of multicolored lights, Tawengwa, with her dark brown locks, looked at every member of the intimate audience with love in her eyes and a smile on her face. With no further introduction, she began to sing songs from her forthcoming album Mushandira Pamwe, an homage to the past that created her, the present that supports her, and the future that drives her.
Named after the Mushandirapamwe hotel in Zimbabwe, the album celebrates the legacy of the hotel that Tawengwa’s grandfather built. During its prime, the hotel served as a meeting area for those fighting on the side of liberation as well as a creative space for artists of the Diaspora.
“This hotel in Zimbabwe is such a historic place,” she said. “To me, it is a national treasure and I believe that this album will begin a pilgrimage for artists who were there in the eighties to go back to that space and re-awaken it for my generation.”
On the Shrine’s stage, Tawengwa has incorporated personal lessons into the hustle and struggle of being an artist in New York City. The commitment that drives her comes in the form of spreading the culture of and writing an alternate history for Zimbabwe. As the country’s self-appointed cultural ambassador (a role she takes very seriously), Tawengwa uses her music as a way to elevate and commit to issues that are important to her.
“Tonight, I want you all to join me on a journey, and unleash your love.”
The first time I saw Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa perform was during her choreodrama and senior thesis, Dawn of the Rooster. Sitting in the dark auditorium of Fine Hall, a building that claims Princeton’s mathematically inclined as well as a stellar view of campus, the audience was thrust into a dramatic rendition of the Zimbabwe War of Liberation, also known as the Rhodesian Bush War. Through a series of monologues based on real accounts, original music, and film, Tawengwa recreated, in roughly one hour, the history of her family’s unsung heroism and involvement in the civil war. Perhaps more incredible than the actual performance is the background behind the drama’s production.
In the spring of her sophomore year at Princeton Tawengwa’s brother died, prompting her immediate return home.
“I was so hurt, I was grieving,” she said. “I felt so acutely the distance between me and my family.”
Since her relocation to America at 16 years old, to attend the United World College in New Mexico, Tawengwa felt as though she had missed out on the opportunity to learn about members of her family as people. The realization of this disconnect came when she was asked to perform at the memorial services of those who passed.
“I did not just want to sing any song, I wanted to sing their songs but I didn’t know it because I never asked,” she said. She had failed to learn about these “people as people.”
Above: Tawengwa’s first album, recorded after the death of her brother.
With a face missing every time she returned, Tawengwa felt hurt that she lacked tangible knowledge about individuals in her family. That summer, turning down an internship with MTV, she boarded a plane to her hometown of Harare, Zimbabwe. With three months of no electricity or cellphone service, the people in her family, according to Tawengwa, “mostly talked.”
“The Dawn of the Rooster started off as story time with my mom,” she said. “I ask her what is her earliest memory and she tells me about the town and all of sudden she is talking about the war.”
But, it was not only her mother. After asking other relatives, including aunts and uncles, Tawengwa continued to hear themes of the war sprinkled in each person’s narrative.
“The war, the war, the war,” she said. “So all of a sudden I am hearing about the war, but not in just some abstract, but the real terror that my parents and their generation grew up in.”
It was the commitment and resilience her relatives maintained in the face of the horrors of the war that inspired Tawengwa to begin writing The Dawn of the Rooster. Beyond being a play that sheds light on an untold part of history, the choreodrama is a celebration of those individuals whom Tawengwa calls her heroes.
“The tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter until the lion learns to write. Write lioness though because I always say lioness.” she said with a smile. “So, until this lioness was writing, the story was skewed in one way.”
For Tawengwa, writing the story comes through music, which she sees as less of singing songs and more of adopting another language. A language that she began learning at a young age. As a child, her mother used to play the soundtrack to the 1996 comedy-drama The Preacher’s Wife starring Whitney Houston and Denzel Washington. Having watched the film “about a million times,” Tawengwa would spend most car rides listening to the soundtrack and in particular Houston’s song “Who Would Imagine a King.” One day she sang the song during a church service, marking her foray into the world of music. By age 13, Tawengwa was classically trained in piano and the cello.
While the skills learned and the early exposure to music helped her form a relationship with the art, Tawengwa cited the commitment of the individuals around her as the real reason for her current state. From her, now 101-year-old, piano teacher in Zimbabwe to her music teachers in New Mexico, Tawengwa believes she is “living off of the commitment and faith of many of the people who simply believed” in her.
“The tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter until the lion learns to write. Write lioness though because I always say lioness.”
The path to a musical future was in no way a straight line. After enrolling at Princeton University, the young musician decided to pursue pre-medical studies. But soon she found that she had put herself in her own “prison.” She could not help but feel as though she “was running on a treadmill.” Eventually, she “got fed up” and abandoned the future of medicine for one in music.
“When I switched to music it was like coming for air,” she said. Not only this, but it was a reminder of the commitment she had been exposed to earlier. The same commitment that allowed her family to thrive and survive the war and her music teachers to support her dreams.
“My family taught me commitment,” she said. “You must commit and you must have a connection. You must believe in what you do and that belief must always be bigger than yourself.”
With that mission, Tawengwa and her band have embarked on their own journey to bring Mushandira Pamwe to life. From setting up a Go Fund Me to cover studio costs to starting a preview tour, Tawengwa is determined to gain exposure, garner support, and share the history of Zimbabwe through her music.
“I feel like I am a part of a wave, a sort of renaissance,” she said referring to the encouragement received about this album. “A celebration of identity at a time when black peoples across the globe are celebrating themselves.”
Tawengwa performs a preview of her forthcoming third album at the Shrine / Photo by Lovia Gyarkye
A celebration that Tawengwa not only embraces, but also thinks is long over due. For the past year, her experiences as a black woman in New York City have been both encouraging and, at times, disheartening. On the one hand, she has received immense support from the “phenomenal black women artists” of productions such as her first off Broadway show, Generations. However, on the other hand, she has been told by some that she “does not belong here” or even “deserve to be here.”
But for Tawengwa, these comments only add fuel to the fire of her dreams. With her band ready to hit the studio to record Mushandira Pamwe, she continues to focus on her goal of building a legacy.
“There is no point in waiting for someone to build you a theatre,” she said when thinking about the role of black women in artistic spaces. “Build your own and tell your own stories in it and no one can tell you that your story can’t be told because you built your own space.”
“I want to build,” she said. “I want to continue in the legacy of my grandfather where I create things that the generation after can reap the benefits of just as I am reaping the benefits.”
To support and learn more about Mushandira Pamwe, visit Tawengwa’s Go Fund Me or visit her Facebook page.
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