Manhungetunge means "stomach ache," and refers here to the feeling Mapfumo gets when surveying his once rich and hopeful country in its current state of mismanagement and despair. This was also a pretty topsy-turvy time for the Blacks Unlimited and the album reflects that as well. It is pieced together from three separate recording sessions and includes the last Blacks Unlimited recordings from guitarist Joshua Dube and trumpeter Everson Chibamu, both of whom died during the year after its release. Backing singers Memory Makuri and Rosa Sande, and drummer Gordon Mapika also left the band during that difficult year.

Manhungetunge kicks off with a pop ditty called "Big in America," featuring rock guitar riffs contributed by American free-jazzer Woody Aplanalp. Mapfumo says the song is a poke at Zimbabwean kids who are easily seduced by everything American, but the piece does play as a love song to Mapfumo's adoptive home, and it's hard to believe there isn't some real affection there on his part. The next four songs--all recorded shortly before the album's 2000 release--are mostly 3-chord numbers with cheerful music bearing angry lyrics. "Manhungetunge" perhaps the most tuneful song in the set, ends with a satisfying stretch of jazzy horn work. There is less Shona tradition in these songs than on a typical Mapfumo release, perhaps a reflection of the fact that mbira player Bezil Makombe, a strong creative force in the band since the early 1990s, left to form his own band in South Africa and plays on just four songs. Mapfumo mostly works in his own idiom here, a self-styled amalgam of Southern African pop elements with an underlying bed of mbiras--the Shona hand piano that lies at the heart of the Blacks Unlimited sound.

The last four tracks come from 1999 when Makombe, Dube, and drummer Sam Mukanga (who died in 2002) were all in fine form. These are the best tracks on the album: "Regai Vakanganise (Let them Do Wrong)" a showcase for Dube's jazzy guitar work, "Pamuromo Chete (It's Just Talking)," an inspired remake of a 1970s Mapfumo classic with his voice now more mournful than angry, and "Chemtengure" the one Shona traditional piece on the album. Also in this group is the song I contributed to, "Mangoma (Big Drum)," a warm, pendulous groove that lifts to a fast end section graced with mournful choral work warning Zimbabwean youth about the dangers of losing their souls in foreign ways.

Chimurenga Rebel is overall a more settled and cohesive album, created in a single stretch of recording by essentially the band Mapfumo currently works with today. The album breaks some new ground with songs such as the march-like shuffle "Havasevenzi Vapfana (The Youth are Unemployed)" and the R&B-tinged "Huni," which features rich brass section work and a freewheeling tenor sax break from American guest David Rhodes. But the greatest strength here is in the more traditionally oriented songs. "Baba Vevana (Father of my Children") is a cousin of the Shona traditional classic, "Nyama Musango." "Wauraiwa (He Has Been Killed"),"Maravanhando ("You've Been Telling us Lies"), and "Yarira Ngoma (When You Play the Drums") all feature the brooding cycles of mbira music, and mournful, rich vocal choral work led by Mapfumo's own deep, untiring voice.

Mapfumo sings here with the haunted passion of a political exile, and essentially, that's what he is, although he did bravely return to Zimbabwe to perform these songs at the end of 2001, regaling a crowd of some 10,000 on New Year's Eve with his dissatisfaction with Zimbabwe's status quo just months before the country's fraudulent presidential election. Chimurenga Rebel offers some of the most hard-hitting political lyrics on any Mapfumo album. Political violence, government ineptitude and lies all figure into the package. "Huni" comes close to naming the late provocateur of the war veterans "Hitler" Hunzvi. And Mapfumo even goes after President Mugabe's sacred cow, the policy of forcibly removing white farmers from their land. Lyrically and musically one of the great Mapfumo songs of recent years, "Marima Nzara (You Have Ploughed Hunger)" poignantly predicts Zimbabwe's government-caused famine while creating the ambiance of a Shona village with choral singing, clapping, and the hypnotic cycles of mbira music.

As a pair these albums certainly prove that while Mapfumo may be out (of Zimbabwe), he is not down. In fact, he remains one of the most engaged, prolific, and creative Africa band leaders of his time.

Contributed by: Banning Eyre for www.afropop.org