Virginia Mukwesha-Hetze – A Tribute to Stella Chiweshe
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| free admission |
| Accessible for wheelchairs |
| Ground Floor, Schlüter Courtyard |
| Belongs to: Airing Out – Open Air in the Schlüter Courtyard |
The Queen is dead – long live the Queen! In 2021, the great Zimbabwean musician and Berliner-by-choice Stella Rambisai Chiweshe had opened the first DURCHLÜFTEN Festival. In early 2023, she died at the age of 76. To kick off the 2023 festival, we commemorate the “Queen of the Mbira” with a musical tribute.
The supernatural sound of the mbira already enchanted the audience of the very first DURCHLÜFTEN festival in 2021. This year Virginia Mukwesha-Hetze the daughter of Stella Chiweshe will open the evening together with her mother’s students Stefan Franke, Camille Bokhobza and Fabiano Lima.
Virginia Mukwesha-Hetze has been playing mbira since she was 12 and has created her very own sound based on the musical heritage of her mother. Tradition and modernity are not opposites for Virginia Mukwesha, but rather cross-fertilize each other. For example, she fuses Jiti rhythms from South Africa with traditional Shona melodies or writes completely new pieces for mbira.
Virginia Muskwesha-Hetze live in Vienna
The mbira is a traditional instrument of the Shona people in Zimbabwe, played for thousands of years (almost exclusively by men). Stella Chiweshe elicited sounds of breathtaking beauty and depth from the metal reeds of this relatively small instrument.
The metal of the keys was originally extracted from the mountains that also housed the deceased leaders of the Shona. The keys thus embody the presence of these powerful ancestors. In the traditional religion of the Shona, nightly ceremonies are held in which the mbira helps to contact the spirits of the ancestors by putting the tribe members in a trance.
Stella Rambisai Chiweshe first learned the instrument secretly at a young age, as it was not traditionally accessible to women. Later she became one of the most internationally recognized players and ambassadors of her people. She gave international Mbira concerts, among others already in 1988 in the Palace of the Republic in Berlin.
Stella Chiweshe Meets Ukuka | Boiler Room x Nyege Nyege Festival