African music is the main course at tonight’s Mountain Village Sunset Concert Series. Zimbabwe native Blessing Chimanga currently lives in Boulder, and his Front Range based band plays music from Chimanga’s native country. The seven- piece world music group takes the stage at 6 p.m. at Conference Center Plaza.
Chimanga grew up in Zimbabwe and attended school there before immigrating to Boulder. He teaches music in and around Colorado when not performing live.
“Since 2024, I’ve been touring around the U.S. performing and doing workshops,” Chimanga said in an interview. “I’m very passionate about sharing my African music and African identity with students and the people in this country.”
The rest of the bandmembers in Chimanga’s band are Americans. The band has played festivals, concert halls, summer concert series and recently finished a tour of the Northwest. They were also featured on E-Town, the popular public radio music program.
In the fall, Chimanga will do more workshops and educational activities, while still playing live gigs. His students are a mixture of elementary schoolers through college students. Some classes are just one-off workshops, and others are ongoing programs. Much of his educational work happens in the Durango area.
Chimanga started playing drums in a church in Zimbabwe. He went to a high school that had music as a subject, so he concentrated his studies on music.
“The school asked me to do a western instrument and an African instrument, and that’s how I picked up the marimba as my African instrument ,and little did I know that the marimba was actually the instrument that was going to show me the world,” Chimanga said.
The marimba is the Zimbabwe national instrument, alongside an instrument called the mbira.
The marimba is in the xylophone family. It is a percussive instrument that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the marimba has a lower range.
There are several different types of marimba. Blessing plays a 17-key marimba.
“Zimbabwean music has its own very unique, different style that makes it different from the music of Nigeria or other African countries,” Chimanga said. “The most distinguishing thing is the usage of our two traditional instruments which are the marimba and mbira. And also our music is really polyrhythm based. I mix traditional marimba music with contemporary sounds. I sing in my vernacular language, which is called Shona, while still playing dance beats that people dance to, but infused with these traditional elements.”
Chimanga has traveled to 23 countries as a marimba player and as a drummer with different bands. It was that traveling as a musician that led him to want to move to the United States.
“I was already a world traveler, and I really wanted to teach the marimba,” Chimanga said. “Marimba has grown in the U.S., so I came and did a bunch of work in the marimba communities around the U.S.A. Colorado has a marimba school (Kutandara in Boulder) and so does Seattle. There’s one in Alaska. That’s what really prompted me. I wanted to come and share my memories as a coach with these communities at the same time sharing my music, and I think both have balanced very well with me — performing at the same time as teaching.”
What does Chimanga hope people take away from seeing him perform?
“I hope that people can take away joy, just to have a good time,” he said. “We play happy music. We play very high energy based shows with a lot of dancing and a lot of crowd engagement. I really hope that they just take away joy. I hope they take away the love that we have for this music and the passion that we carry.
“I also hope they take away my message,” Chimanga continued. “I sing a lot about peace. I share a lot about how together as a united world we can be together and understand each other and our differences. So I hope they can feel the healing power of the music.”