Sekuru and I are seated together now on one of the green couches in the living room, just like before. It is hot and stuffy in the room, just like before. I have a slight feeling of mbira-lesson-dread in my stomach, just like before. I sigh softly to get my courage up.
"Sekuru," I inform him, "I think I just want to try and learn kutsinhira now."
A voice inside of me is protesting as I announce this to him. A whole new level of mbira to wrestle through, am I up for it? It's not that the actual kutsinhira, parts are difficult to learn, they are similar to kushaura parts pattern wise; it's the rhythm and timing, when played with the kushaura, that make me hesitant. The kutsinhira is played in a contrasting and syncopated rhythm with the kushaura, "behind" some teachers say, though the songs are cyclical in truth, so that's just a way to introduce it to foreigners: how about a funky, sublime weaving? I've yet to fully grasp the whole mbira beat anyway; it's not music I grew up with, so it's not inherently sounding in my body. Having very little musical training I can't even approach it intellectually (which may be a blessing)&ndash so, what do I have then? Well, I do have a patient, master mbira player as my teacher so this is a lending grace at least. How much easier it would be though, to just give up playing mbira and listen to him instead... diving into the sparkling river of his sound... drifting down through the depths of his soul's improvisational sea.
For a weird, time-warp moment I'm thrust back into one of my first lessons with Sekuru, here on this couch. I was plugging away at a simple kushaura part I had just learned while Sekuru accompanied me with kutsinhira, but he didn't just play the part, he was embellishing it like a jazz musician would do, interlacing in and out of the basic melody with exquisite inventiveness. I found myself leaning slightly toward him to allow at least one ear to capture his artistry but it was big challenge for me; I was not advanced as yet to really listen to another part and hold my line, let alone respond musically, but he was achingly compelling.
"Oh, I see," another student uttered of him once, "it's Jimi Hendrix on the mbira."
Pulled off focus, I soon faltered, messing up the round. I stopped, laying the mbira on my lap.
"Oh Sekuru," I practically whined, "you sound so great, doing all kinds of things!"
Sekuru shook his head serenely and stopped playing too. Resting his mbira on his lap, he pulled his nhekwe out of his pocket and calmly took some snuff.
"You know," he told me that afternoon, "when I first heard mbira I said, 'oh no, I can't do that,' the fingers going all over, but I watched the other players and listened and then I went off alone and I practiced. I practiced and practiced and then, well, I teach myself. Chipendura was my first song. I am a good teacher now because I am patient with my students. You must be patient with you too."
Though I heard what Sekuru was saying I was still daunted. Suddenly I was twelve years old and musically ruined by one event. I played the flute from 5th grade through 7th but gave it up right before turning thirteen. That year I lived with my mother in a leased old farmhouse with two extra bedrooms that she rented out to a variety of recent college grads looking for an alternative, back-to-nature lifestyle in Vermont; none of them stayed around very long. One boarder was a blond guy named Jason who shocked the middle-aged widow across the street by walking around his room in the buff. His room faced her kitchen, the windows were big and he had removed the curtains. He was good-looking if you like the golden-boy type; my mother giggled at the widow's complaints and said she was an old fart.
The spring afternoon of my musical fate I was standing by the table in the kitchen practicing "America the Beautiful," note by dogged note, though feeling fairly happy that I was indeed portraying a recognizable song, when Jason came in through the back door. It took me a few more minutes to finish up what was my fourth run through and, having made the least mistakes that time, I laid my flute down across its case and sat in the chair for a break. Jason, without uttering a word that I recall, put down the beer he had pulled from the refrigerator and took up my flute from the opposite side of the table. Turning my still open book around to see the score, he started playing "America the Beautiful," only he could really play... adding all these notes that weren't on the page; seemingly drawing them from mid air and jazzing the whole thing up into something so fantastic I decided in an instant that I'd never be able to play like him and should just quit before torturing anymore ears. I had never heard real musical improvisation before and it blew me away. Until that moment I had no idea Jason even played flute; I didn't know a thing about him in fact, even though we lived together in the same house.
"That's music," I thought to myself, "it's not just playing notes someone else wrote, which I can barely do anyway, it's adding your own stuff.... making it different and cool."
While my ears were inspired, the rest of me was utterly routed. Why didn't Jason's performance motivate me instead of defeating me? Maybe if he had tried to teach me something instead of just showing off, as I saw it, I would have reacted differently, but ultimately my own lack of confidence is what silenced me: the fledgling, never-to-be flautist.
"But Sekuru," the adolescent inside of me had griped, "I don't see how I'll ever be able to sound anything like you, I'll just always be here playing these little songs."
Sekuru had chuckled and then sighed quietly. "These songs are very ancient you must remember; they go way back. You are not ever playing a little song because that is the song. There is nothing little, it is all from the spirits and that makes it big: big and deep. Come now," he had coaxed me like the wretched child I was being, "we start again and no stopping this time, you must keep going, even if you make a mistake."
I took a long, slow breath, tried to center myself and picked up my mbira, beginning the song again. I played one round and then Sekuru joined in, softly and simply at first, increasing his experimentation within the kutsinhira as we continued on. Time slipped away in the hot room; I was soaked with sweat under my dress, both from the temperature and from an inner heat mbira playing regularly raises in my body. My head hurt a bit from focusing so hard but finally I found a groove and the music filled me with an extraordinary, surging peace that soothed the core of my being separate from the timid student before the song: such a vast, expansive little song.
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