Ambuya!
Piranha Records (55 mins)
Piranha Records have delved into their archives, looked in the ‘1987’ box and recovered the record that started it all for them: the Queen of Mbira Stella Chiweshe’s – and Piranha’s – very first international release. Now they celebrate the record’s 33⅓ anniversary with a nicely polished remaster.
Ambuya! is a warm set of traditional and composed Shona songs on mbira, two marimbas and hosho (shakers) straight from Zimbabwe, with the bass guitar, drum kit and mixing-deskery of British world-musical japesters 3 Mustaphas 3. There’s a lovely mix of solemnity and bounce through the whole thing, especially in the opener ‘Chachimurenga’ – Chiweshe’s most famous piece home and abroad, an implausibly catchy song about the horrors of war.
This reissue also features four extra tracks, taken from Chiweshe’s 1988 Peel Session. Handily, there are no duplications with the original tracks, and the sound is consistent enough with the rest of the album so as not to feel tacked on. Maybe some of the more gung-ho production effects haven’t aged as well as the album’s other elements over more than three decades, but all in all, it’s a lovely album and a welcome reissue of an early-days world music classic.