Is Muchinjiko Jah Prayzah's most touching song?



Anyone who has been to a Jah Prayzah concert will tell you the man enters another dimension when he starts perfoming.A few tugs on his immaculately polished mbira alongside that booming instrument of a voice and more often than not most people in the arena take his lead and conversate with those in the ancestral realms via a portal which his music seems to open by default.Songs in this mould include Goto and my personal favorite Muchinjikwa Unorema which happens to be my focus today.

Jah's catalogue is vast and it has many notable songs some made strictly for vibing (tsviriyo),some nudging us towards a traditional past we have shunned (Goto) and others we have danced to before denouncing as political vitriol (Kutonga Kwaro) but Muchinjikwa has a special place in my heart.The level of artistry on this song will be a mammoth task to surpas for many even the lanky Uzumba lad himself.For in Muchinjikwa we find that rare compromise that marries seemingly western ideals with traditional African practices in a perfect union that does not seem at all like a marriage of convenience.




The wording is very much Christian with Jah Prayzah likening the heavy load of life to the heavy cross Jesus Christ carried before being nailed and dying on it.The instrumentation and delivery on the other hand is the kind that would make the spirit of Sekuru Chaminuka proud for its delivered like a spirit medium's passionate entreaties to the ancestors to be merciful to the seeds they left behind scores of years ago.The result is a hauntingly beautiful song that does justice to both African Traditional Religion and Christianity without stepping on the toes of either.

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