The music of Zimbabwe's women mbira players
Ambuya is a collaboration between American ethnomusicologist Jennifer Kyker and members of the Zimbabwean women’s musical collective Mhare DzeNhare, or "Experts of the Mbira." Through recordings, photographs, transcriptions and translations of song lyrics, and biographical information, Ambuya highlights the work of Zimbabwe’s women mbira musicians. Conceived of as a digital album, Ambuya presents an innovative online music format that encourages listeners to engage with complex digital musical objects, extending the possibilities for online music production beyond conventional streaming platforms.
The Role of Digital Scholarship
When professor Kyker approached the Digital Scholarship team, she envisioned a website mimicking the experience of a record player. She had identified some plugins and open-source interactive code to achieve this effect. Our initial task was to assess these tools to determine the best web technologies for her project.
We then collaborated with her to:
- scope the website
- define her audience
- establish communication goals
- develop a content strategy
This process led us to outline the information architecture for her project, and, by using User Experience (UX) design methods like wireframing and rapid prototyping, we helped her visualize and refine the website.
Given the project’s contained size and the complexity of its interactions, we went beyond our typical scope of Digital Scholarship services and opted for a hard-coded approach using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for implementation. Ambuya's website is hosted through our Digital Scholar platform. We were able to map Professor Kyker's custom domain to the site, and configured Google analytics for the project.
In addition to the UX and development work, we also contributed to the graphic design process, creating a logo and designing album covers for the LP albums to be pressed later.
What’s Next?
All songs derived from the project have been published digitally on Ambuya's site and will soon be available on LP albums for purchase on Bandcamp.
Jennifer Kyker, an associate professor of music in the Arthur Satz Department of Music and associate professor of ethnomusicology at the Eastman School of Music has been playing Zimbabwean music since 1990. Her most recent project puts Zimbabwe’s women mbira players in center stage—and called for the help of Digital Scholarship (DS) at the River Campus Libraries.
