The Mbira and Stillness

Lately, the world feels loud. Not just in volume, but in pace. Notifications. Deadlines. Opinions. Everybody rushing to be heard. And if I’m honest, some days it all starts to creep into my body. My shoulders tighten, my thoughts scatter, my spirit feels like it’s running without arriving.

For me, the mbira is the antidote.

It’s an ancient piece of Zimbabwe that I carry with me into the quiet of East Sussex. When my thumbs hit those metal keys, everything else softens. It’s less about making music and more about making space. The sound doesn’t shout. It doesn’t demand. It just… pulses. Steady. Patient. Like it’s reminding me that even when things are chaotic, there’s a deeper, slower rhythm we can tap into.

Whenever I hold it, a part of me goes back to Zviyambe, Wedza — to my grandmother’s homestead. Ambuya Rwodzi. I remember being a child and staring at the mbira like it was a small miracle. The way it looked, the way it carried that shimmering sound, like water over stones or wind moving through dry grass. It fascinated me because it felt alive. Like it was speaking, but in a language that didn’t need translating.

I think of sunsets after herding cattle and gathering firewood — that dusty-golden light that made everything feel sacred, even the tiredness in your legs. I remember sitting around the open fire with my cousins while Ambuya Rwodzi finished cooking. The fire snapping softly. The smell of smoke in our clothes. That routine of bathing, then coming back to warm up by the flames, talking about nothing and everything. And if you listened carefully, you could hear the night owls out there — a reminder that the world was bigger than our little circle of light, but also that we were safe inside it.

That’s what the mbira brings me now, here in East Sussex. The same stillness. The same connection. It pulls me out of the noise and back into something older than panic. When I play, I’m not trying to impress anyone. I’m trying to return. To my breath. To my center. To my roots.