In her humble beginnings, little pointed to the fact that young Stella at sixteen would become The Queen of Mbira and nothing short of a national icon. Growing up on a musical diet of white American RocknRoll and Country with Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Jim Reeves, and The Everly Brothers being favorites, she initially showed little interest in local traditional music. She continued to stay unimpressed when her grandparents invited a group of Mbira players from another region for an overnight ritual. It was not until two years later, that Mbira started to ring inside her head loud and endlessly. This overwhelming, mystical experience turned Chiweshe into an avid student of the instrument and the philosophy connected to it. But playing Mbira music was by no means a career option for women in the British colony of Rhodesia: None of the (male) musicians were willing to teach her. And, almost worse, none of the instrument makers agreed to build an instrument for a woman. Stella ended up recording her debut single Kasahwa (1974), the title track of her upcoming Glitterbeat album, on a borrowed thumb piano.

It was not only observations like these which turned the free-spirited Chiweshe into an outspoken feminist.

Kasahwa made Stella a local sensation with the artist at first finding it hard to cope with her newly achieved popularity. After the country had become independent in 1980, Chiweshe started to tour internationally, first as a featured soloist of the new National Dance Company of Zimbabwe, and later under her own name. This quickly made her into a star, during the first international boom of African and world music in the late 1980s. Zimbabwean music was then championed by fans and influential DJs including John Peel alike (Stella has recorded two of Peels legendary Sessions). For more than 35 years, Stella Chiweshe has crossed between Zimbabwe and Germany, where she has a second home in the city of Berlin. In the last few years, things have become a bit quiet around her, which feels unfair, since Chiweshe is still a performer of a breath-taking intensity. You can, therefore, call Kasahwa: Early Singles, her first release in more than a decade, a comeback.