A person among others: Music, morality, and postcolonial politics in the songs of Oliver Mtukudzi

Invoking the musical and cultural heritage of Zimbabwe\u27s rural northeast, vocalist and guitarist Oliver Mtukudzi\u27s distinctive style of popular music, known by audiences as Tuku music, engages listeners in a musical discourse grounded in the indigenous Shona concept of hunhu. Based in principles of mutual respect, self-restraint, and tolerance, hunhu articulates a vision of identity predicated upon moral relationships between the self and others, expressed through the common formulation of being a person among others (kuva munhu pane vanhu). Mtukudzi\u27s songs explore how kinship relations are negotiated within the domestic sphere, speaking to social issues such as inheritance rights, HIV/AIDS, and domestic violence; in contrast to many of his contemporaries, such as Thomas Mapfumo, he maintains that his music is not intended to speak to state politics. His listeners, however, regularly extrapolate from kinship relations within the household to a wider, public sphere, interpreting his musical narratives of hunhu as a figurative critique of national governance. Addressing this contradiction, my work asks how the songs of an artist who has consistently sought to maintain political neutrality have come to represent such a compelling form of political commentary for his audiences. By interrogating the production of power within everyday human interactions, I suggest that Mtukudzi\u27s songs remind listeners of a realm of human agency located at the margins of official politics, yet which harbors powerful implications within the postcolonial state.