For Zvamaida, the musical history is as weighty as the politics. Many of the brilliant guitarists who have helped shape Mapfumo’s vast repertoire over the years are now dead, and Zvamaida feels that when he performs the songs they created, he has to honor them. “I’m trying to be versatile,” he said in his Eugene home recently. “I try to sound exactly like the original recordings.” This means he has to master the muted lyricism of Jonah Sithole and Joshua Dube, who, back in the ’70s, perfected the art of rolling a little flesh over the bridge to damp the strings and approximate the tone of the Zimbabwean mbira (thumb piano). Mapfumo’s mbira adaptations are legendary, but they are by no means the whole story of chimurenga music. Zvamaida also has to channel Sithole’s distinctive, soaring melodic flights, and Dube’s fleet arpeggios and South African swing and “African country music” licks—as well as the intense, percussive attack of Ephraim Karimaura and the expansive, rock-inspired solos of Ashton “Sugar” Chiweshe, two of Mapfumo’s other previous guitarists. Zvamaida says, “I want people to hear me play and ask, ‘Is this the guy who played it on the record?’”

Fortunately, Zvamaida is a gifted mimic with a deep knowledge of Zimbabwe’s indigenous rhythms, and a feel for rock and jazz styles from Thin Lizzy to George Benson. Even as a boy with no musical training, he could figure out songs off the radio using a homemade, 3-string, oil-tin guitar. Ironically, it took Zvamaida losing the tip of his left middle finger in a mill accident in 1976 to make him a serious guitarist. Unable to work, he reached for a guitar and learned songs from the radio, including early hits by Thomas Mapfumo. “I started playing guitar by imitating Thomas’ songs,” says Zvamaida,  “so it’s kind of like a dream come true for me to be here.”

Zvamaida honed his skills as an arranger, composer, and stylist in the Zig Zag band. This versatile combo produced six albums and performed countless live shows during the smoking ’80s and ’90s, when electric guitar boogie bands ruled Zimbabwe’s vibrant urban nightlife scene. Sadly, by 2003, most of the Zig Zag members had died before their time, and Mapfumo, already in exile and looking for a capable guitarist, approached Zvamaida.

Both men have left much behind in Zimbabwe, and they spend their days creating new music for a new time—most recently, acoustic songs unlike anything else in Mapfumo’s vast repertoire. Working with Mapfumo is challenging, because although not a player himself, he often knows exactly what he wants to hear from each instrument, and teaches the parts by singing in the player’s ear. “I get to be creative,” says Zvamaida, “but you have to be very careful, because you have to sound like what he feels like the band should sound like. You also have to avoid repeating ideas from all those recordings.” Threading that needle takes ingenuity, experience, and sometimes courage. “You have to keep on trying,” says Zvamaida. “You can’t just stay there and wait for him to tell you what to play. We sometimes argue, but in the end we mix our ideas together.”

Mbira music still looms large in the Mapfumo repertoire. Its distinctive harmonic progressions—for example:| C, F, Am |Dm, F, Am |C, Em, G |C, Em, Am |—are typically organized within a fluid, 12/8 rhythmic structure that sometimes sounds like 4/4, and sometimes 6/8, even within the same song. For a Blacks Unlimited guitarist, mbira tradition offers an unending supply of musical puzzles to be mastered and shaped into songs. Zvamaida listened to mbira music as a child because his mother adored it, even though the family was never deeply involved in Shona religious practices, where mbira is used to bring about spirit possession. “It is spiritual,” concedes Zvamaida, “but at the same time, it’s just music. If you understand the notes that are being played, and the rhythm, it helps you to create.” These days, Mapfumo is seeking to blur the line between mbira and guitar in his sound. Zvamaida is developing a fingerstyle, chord-based approach to accompanying mbira, interlocking his parts with the music’s deep rhythmic structure, rather than pulling out distinct guitar melodies as his predecessors did. Even in exile, Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited remain at the cutting edge of contemporary Zimbabwean music.