Zimfest 2023: Evening Concert
$18 ($12 ages 6-11; ages 5 & under free)
Schedule:
7:15pm-8pm: ZiMBiRA — 10-piece Afrojam band steeped in traditional Zimbabwean music
8:10pm-8:55pm: Anzanga Marimba Ensemble — Seattle's longest-lived marimba group
9:05pm-9:50pm: Mudavanhu Magaya and Friends — Muda carries on the Chikonamombe mbira legacy
10pm-10:45pm: Boka Marimba — Portland's finest
About the Festival: The 2023 Zimbabwean Music Festival will take place August 3-6 at Oregon State University in Corvallis. A family-friendly cultural festival, Zimfest has something for everyone: Dynamic concerts, fun educational workshops, African marketplace and more. This year represents a return to the heartland of Oregon as the festival was last held at OSU in 2010 and 2011. Accomodations and activities, including music and dance workshops, will be centered in McNary Hall. Afternoon and evening concerts, the African Marketplace and our first Night Market will all take place outdoors at adjacent McNary Field (Lower Campus).
About Zimfest
The Zimbabwean Music Festival is an annual celebration of Zimbabwean music and culture. A fun-filled four-day weekend of concerts, workshops, community conversations, a marketplace and more, Zimfest is the largest annual gathering in North America of students, teachers, performers, and fans of Zimbabwean music.
https://zimfest.org/About ZiMBiRA
ZiMBiRA Afrofusion Band revels in the traditional and contemporary music of Zimbabwe. The music is grounded in the ancient repertoire of the mbira and the beat of the hosho shaker. It evolves as the beautiful lines are reflected on the guitar and marimba, and other instrumentation of the moment which may include mbira, karimba, guitar, bass, marimba, hosho, vocals, and hand and kit drums.
https://zimbira.com/homeAbout Anzanga Marimba Ensemble
Anzanga is celebrating its 36th year as a performing ensemble. The group has toured internationally in South Africa, China and Canada and performed extensively throughout the US. Anzanga has produced five recordings and will produce a new release this year.
http://www.anzangamarimba.bandAbout Mudavanhu Magaya
As the son of world-renowned gwenyambira, the late Cosmas Magaya, Mudavanhu "Muda" Magaya has played the Zimbabwean mbira nhare (aka mbira dzavadzimu) from an early age.
About Boka Marimba
Boka Marimba is a ten-member dance band that plays exhilarating, positive-energy music from Zimbabwe and other areas of southeastern Africa. The music is in the Shona style: Melodic themes and variations layered in polyrhythmic, cyclic patterns. People, on hearing this music for the first time, have often described the feeling as one of coming home. Some have spoken of dancing for the first time in their lives, or for the first time ever out of the privacy of their living rooms. People of all ages respond with enthusiasm and delight. At one outdoor festival, an elderly gentleman came up and said, "This was some of the best entertainment of my life. I tried to stay seated, but finally had to get up and dance."
The band's instrumentation consists of seven marimbas (two sopranos, one alto, two tenors, a baritone, and a bass), gourd shakers called hosho, mbira ("thumb piano"), and drums. The songs are sung in the Shona language.
https://bokamarimba.com/