Communicating Healing Through Ethnic Music: An Analysis of Shona Indigenous Approaches to Psycho-Social Support for the Bereaved as Projected Through Selected Songs by Oliver Mtukudzi
Abstract
Through analyzing Zimbabwean musician, Oliver Mtukudzi’s lyrics, we explore the Shona community’s concept of death as a culturally codified rite of passage. Through a discursive analysis of Mtukudzi’s songs, the paper explores approaches to psycho-social support for the grieving that occurs within Shona cosmology and cultural praxis. It shows that healing is a multi-factorial process that is contextualized within community cultural and ethical values, with the Shona being an ubuntu-inspired community that believes in collectivity and inter-relatedness. Music educates, counsels, and facilitates a degree of acceptance in a broad spectrum of interventions that constitute healing at multiple levels.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Death
Funerary Practices
and Mourning
Grief
Bereavement
and Mental Health
Diverse Musicological Studies
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Popular Music & Society
- Volume
- 49
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 107–125
- Publication date
- 9 February 2026
- Language
- EN