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Victor Kunonga

Jonathan Mbiriyamveka Entertainment Reporter
Musician Victor Kunonga will tonight rekindle his romance with music lovers at Old Mutual Theatre Alliance Francaise starting at 7.30pm. The show will bring Kunonga up close and personal with his fans who love the soothing rhythms as they dance the night away. Kunonga, who is popular among the mature crowd flawlessly delivers the music without breaking a sweat but satisfaction is guaranteed.

“My most valued reward is playing music from a place ‘deep within’, that wins hearts, which naturally becomes my award,” Kunonga said.
Songs such as “Mayidarirei” taken from his 2004 release “Such is Life”, “Marunjeya”, “Wega” and “Handinete” show Kunonga’s great artistry as a masterful story teller and lyricist.

According to his biography, Kunonga’s music is not easy to pin down to a particular style.
Listeners may associate Victor with a chimurenga style, but the two are different. Yet Kunonga’s music is not chimurenga, really. It follows its own path.

The main characteristic of his music derives from cross-cutting mbira patterns employed on two lead guitars, or guitar and mbira, with interwoven bass and drum lines.

He departs from typical chimurenga patterns to create a hybrid of sounds, with clever and unexpected use of spaces and times signatures, and complex poly-rhythms through the interlocking guitars.

In a broader and historic music sense, Victor’s real legacy is closer to the legendary Zimbabwean guitar bands of the 1970s and 80s, and his guitar sound and style, while chimurenga-patterned in parts, owes much to this generation who performed before him.

Lyrically, Kunonga’s social commentary is poetic and profound, but accessible, painting a poignant vocal picture of what he observes as he touches the pulse of society, charting its trajectory.