Popular Music Canindo by the Chewa

Ensemble Tidziwani Bandi of N’Tequesse - Zambezi Valley , Tete Province

6 artists on stage - 5 musicians and 1 dancer

Owing to the presence of Bantu, the Chewa, who belong to an ethnic group similar to the Congo Bemba, emigrated over a thousand years ago to the mountains of what is now Malawi, as well as to the Zambezi valley in the north west of Mozambique.
This small bush orchestra performs in the bars of this region. Armed with planks of wood shaped like electric guitars sporting a few pieces of tightly strung wire, and accompanied by a drum set made from bicycle bells and old tam-tams, they play the local repertoire, canindo, which resembles the urban Marrabenta.

Timbila (xylophones) and Chopi dances

Ensemble Chopi Timbila Orquestra of Xizoho - Zavala Region

14 artists on stage - 10 musicians and 4 dancers

The Chopi represent 760,000 people in Mozambique, they belong mainly to the Shona culture of Zimbabwe and live on fertile lands with abundant harvests in the southern region known as "Chopiland". Thus they have been able to devote themselves largely to practicing music.
They are the ones who carry on the tradition of the xylophone orchestra: timbila (plural of mbila, xylophone). This musical tradition, the prerogative of tribal chiefs, almost disappeared during a civil war which lasted for almost 20 years (1975-1992). Nowadays this traditional art is flourishing and was registered by the UNESCO in 2005 as an immaterial cultural heritage of humanity. Many villages have their own ensemble of timbila and this tradition is stimulated by a multitude of festivals and encounters. Its survival was made possible thanks to the last great music master, Venancio Mbande who died recently but who was able to pass on his knowledge up to 2008 after meeting the South African musicologist, Hugh Tracey, in Transvaal as early as 1953. A concert of timbila, called ngodo can take place as part of the ritual commemoration of an ancestor (chidilo), a harvest festival celebration or simply a wedding.
Veritable musical suites played with speed and virtuosity accompany the musingi dancers carrying warriors’ attributes, in particular the shield made of hide and a weapon: machete, ritual axe or lance. To quote the ethnomusicologist Pierre Bois, it is a dance which is often full of grace but also full of humour and truculence.
This orchestral aspect of the xylophone which is quite rare in Africa, has given rise to a number of historical and musicological hypotheses, one of which would have it that the timbila ensembles were influenced by the Indonesian gamelan and that this was brought about through  contact with sailors from Java and Bali.