Dumisani Maraire

Dumisani Abraham ( " Dumi " ) Maraire ( born August 24, 1943 in Chakowa, Chimanimani District, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); † 25 November 1999) was a Zimbabwean musician, composer and university teacher.

Dumisani Maraire was born in a village south of Mutare in what was then Rhodesia in a Methodist family, was sung in the lot. His mother was a Xhosa, his father came from the ethnic group of the Shona. Maraire made ​​first a teacher training and was commissioned in 1966 to the Kwanongoma College of Music in Bulawayo. There he became a virtuoso on the Nyunga - Nyunga mbira (a form of the so-called " thumb piano ") and the marimba. 1968-1972 Maraire worked as a Visiting Artist and Guest Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle ( Ethnomusicology Department). In the following years he taught at Evergreen State College in Olympia (Washington) and also had many private students.

In 1982 he returned to Zimbabwe to establish a training program for Ethnomusicology at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare. 1986 to 1990 he taught again in Seattle and graduated from the University of Washington doctoral degrees in music ethnology. He then worked again as a university lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe ( from 1998 as leader of the local Department of African Languages ​​and Literature ), temporary president of the Zimbabwe College of Music and Chairman of the International Music Council of his native country, where he died in 1999.

Maraire made ​​the music of his homeland in the U.S. Northwest known and founded several marimba ensembles, which he also directed. For these ensembles, and for the mbira arranged and he composed many pieces. He also wrote church music.

One of his daughters was the singer Chiwoniso Maraire.