30 Days of Iconic Zimbabwean Jazz: Mamurega by Victor Kunonga

Award-winning jazz singer and songwriter Victor Kunonga is a masterful storyteller and lyricist. His songs derive from a profound sense of dignity and social awareness, confronting issues of poverty, dispossession and the rights of ordinary people.

In 1999, his dream of enrolling with the college of music in Bulawayo was shattered when he was told he ought to have an instrument or two to be accepted by the college. Since he did not have one, it only followed that he failed to enrol. He then moved to Harare to join a designing interest, having completed a commercial designing course majoring in graphics.

In the early half of 2001, Victor started attending music workshops at the college of music in Harare where he first handled a guitar to learn how to play the strings for the first time.

Victor formed the group “Peace” in 2004 and since then, they have been a part of every major festival in Zimbabwe and a regular feature at premium Zimbabwe functions and Jazz clubs. Victor and Peace have also performed alongside musical greats like Oliver Mtukudzi, Steve Dyer, Malaika, Habib Coyete, Jabu Khanyile, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Judith Sephuma, Louis Mhlanga, and Hugh Masekela.

Victor is also a social activist who strives to work toward social justice and change through his music. Through working with non-governmental organisations, he has been vocal in fighting social ills such as gender-based violence and drug abuse.

Mamurega from his sophomore “Uyo” is a timeless searing narrative of morality that sees Victor going to the deeper depths of sharing a powerful message.

Watch the video on YouTube.

All April long, #enthuse through our 30 Days of Iconic Zimbabwean Jazz series celebrates the heritage and history of jazz music and curates thirty songs by jazz pioneers and contemporary musicians who have successfully taken on the genre and defined a sound for the rest of the world to follow.