Proud Zimbo [Anhu Acho]

Artificial Intelligence is here to stay, at the moment it's in nearly every online platform in one way or the other. There is still a lot skepticism about it's overall benefits and whether the current direction and developments are the way to go but we can no longer ignore or easily block it. In Zimbabwe the majority of people experience AI via WhatsApp's Meta, it's the platform that's easiest to access. Its basically used as a Google alternative.  Those who have full access to other AI platforms know how disruptive AI is becoming. At the current moment the creative sector is feeling some serious heat, arguably the biggest disruption the sector has ever faced.   In just a few years of AI going mainstream graphic designing is basically dead, AI models can easily design a standard flyer, logo, advert. Music production is also under threat with platforms such as Suno music where one can make a full song from just prompts, for genres such as pop music which was fully co...

This has been another impressive year on the music scene, local artists have been racking up huge views on streaming sites, arguably the best year when it comes to streams, views and like to date for local artists. On the singles side it had been a huge year but when it comes to albums its a different story, many artists fear making albums and prefer to stick to singles. I partly can understand them as making an album requires an artist to dig deep, an album is when an artist invites listeners into their world, take them on a tour how they see the world, how they interpret certain things, or address certain issues...etc.  Making an album is not necessarily about making hits, an album can be coveted and successful without any runaway hit track, its the journey which the album takes you on that pushes it to success. The journey takes precedence, that is why you hear artists say I did not think this song was gonna be this big, sometimes it may even be that track they wanted to leave o...

Its that time of the year where many are waiting to see which track is going to be crowned the best of the year. 2025 like many years we have been blessed with a lot of beautiful and powerful music which makes the task of compiling a top 10 list a mountain of a task.  The Zimbabwean music industry is growing in all aspects, the music and sound is becoming more diverse, artists are now willing to try something new, creativity is increasing in all forms (production, visuals, arrangements...etc) and I'm loving it. This year we have been blessed with different styles of music with varying arrangements, from Kizomba to Bira music, its been diverse.  For this Top 10 the period under consideration is any song that was released from 1st Nov 2024 to 31st Oct 2025. The reason being most tracks released in November or December usually starts getting proper airplay the following year especially for newer upcoming or less known artists. The major challenge when compiling such a list is fig...

Its been a while from the moment I published the last edition of this series, life has been happening but now I am a bit settled and decided to resume. This is one of my favourite series to research and compile, it forces me to dig deep and listen to many songs before I arrive at the five projects that I will share with you.  Doing album reviews at the moment is chaotic as albums are dropping from all angles so will slow down on those and will only review a few select projects dedicating more time to topics like the one we are doing today.  To take you back a bit, this series Best Abums from Zimbabwe came about as a way of having a ready made well curated list of the finest music projects from Zimbabwe to provide anyone interested in Zimbabwean music a perfect starting spot. This series also aims at exposing Zimbabweans to some projects they overlooked or those that never came their way, which all adds to new life to those projects and makes one more prouder of being Zimbabwea...

Sometimes you need all hands on deck to move the mountain. This is what the Kwela Initiative aimed to do when they created their workshop titled, "Hip Hop vs The Community". Hip Hop in its nature is about challenging the status quo, shining the light on the ignored and overlooked aspects of community. This workshop was aimed at shing the light on the challenges that Hip Hop artists in the City were facing and finding a way to change the narrative. Bulawayo is gifted with many exciting rappers but on the national scale most of them are unknown, changing this narrative is the biggest challenge the creatives in the City face.  The arts sector in Zimbabwe is heavily skewed towards Harare and its a tall order for Bulawayo (or any other City/Town) to even out the landscape. A lot of strategy and funding is required to do so. To succeed the whole city (artist, promoters, authorities and fans) have to stand together, they need to make so much noise that the whole nation stops and lis...

So the inevitable has happened, Baba Harare is back to Jiti. This wont come as a surprise, the main question was always how long before he returns. Personally I did not understand the move, when an artist feels like releasing a gospel song they can do so without necessarily making a scene about it, anyone is allowed to sing for their Creator. As I highlighted in my article about artists switching to gospel, one of the major points was that the gospel community does not like to pay artists or any service provider, they hide behind "do it for the Lord and he will bless you" tip and that for me is plain slavery clothed as the gospel, just as pastors are financially taken care of, any person (member or not) who the church hire/books to provide a service should be adequately paid, not given a token of appreciation, a full service fee. Back to the music, after his switch no artist really made a serious push to fill the gap left by Baba Harare, something that is quite shocking and d...