Dumisani Maraire

Dumisani Abraham ("Dumi") Maraire (born August 24, 1943 in Chakowa , Chimanimani District , Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe ); † November 25, 1999 ) was a Zimbabwean musician, composer and university teacher.

Dumisani Maraire was born in a village south of Mutare in what was then Rhodesia to a Methodist family that sang a lot. His mother was a Xhosa and his father came from the Shona ethnic group . Maraire first made a teacher training and in 1966 went to the Kwanongoma College of Music in Bulawayo . There he developed into a virtuoso on the Nyunga-Nyunga Mbira (a form of the so-called "thumb piano") and the marimba . From 1968 to 1972 Maraire worked as a visiting artist or visiting professor at the University of Washington in Seattle(Ethnomusicology Department). In the following years he taught at Evergreen State College in Olympia (Washington) and also had many private students.

In 1982 he returned to Zimbabwe to set up a music ethnology training program at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare . From 1986 to 1990 he taught again in Seattle and obtained a doctorate in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington. He then worked again as a professor at the University of Zimbabwe (from 1998 as head of the department for African languages and literature there), temporarily president of the Zimbabwe College of Music and chairman of the International Music Council in his home country, where he died in 1999.

Maraire made the music of his homeland in the American Northwest known and founded several marimba ensembles there, which he also directed. He arranged and composed numerous pieces for these ensembles as well as for the mbira. He also wrote church music.

One of his daughters was the singer Chiwoniso Maraire .

literature

Wolfgang Herbst (Ed.): Who is who in the hymnal? Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001, ISBN 3-525-50323-7 , p. 209

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Maraire, Dumisani
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Maraire, Dumi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Zimbabwean musician, composer and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH	August 24, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH	Chakowa , Chimanimani District, Zimbabwe
DATE OF DEATH	November 25, 1999