Exploring widowhood experiences through selected Zimbabwean Shona songs

This article explores the post-death socio-cultural and economic vicissitudes that are encountered by widows in the context of losing the husband as a male counterpart. Focus is on the reflections from male-sung selected Shona songs as cultural texts, namely, Simon Chimbetu’s Shirikadzi (widow), Solo Makore’s Shirikadzi (widow), and Oliver Mutukudzi’s Neria. These song texts are utilized as the article’s primary sources and prism through which the typical lived and liveable realities of widowhood among the Shona people of Zimbabwe are interpreted. Obtaining in the lyrical renditions and maintained as the argument of the article is that losing the husband, in a nuclear Shona family setup, plunges the surviving female spouse into socio-economic turbulence and emotional turmoil. In this regard, responsible participation and complementarity among kin members become indispensable. With less effective social nets towards such vulnerable groups in contemporary society, the article further avers that this has far-reaching implications on the kinship system–precisely the elder son (mwanakomana) and/or the brother (hanzvadzi), among others. Thus, unlike previous widowhood studies, this article uniquely interrogates widowed women’s uncomfortable experiences as a society collective responsibility rather than an individual burden. The article uniquely engages music since it is deployed as a functional and valid tool for mass communication. The expressed poignant widowhood challenges are appreciated from the perspective of Africana womanism theory against the backdrop that the issues are conceptualised within the socio-cultural and economic frame of male-female relations.