Shungudzo

Photography by Yazz Alali. Interview by Heather Hawke.

Zimbabwean-American artist/activist Shungudzo released her debut album, I’m not a mother, but I have children, via Svikiro Records/Young Forever/BMG on June 18^th. The album was written and produced primarily on her own and is Shungudzo’s musical diary that challenges today’s societal systems while introspectively shedding light on her own personal journey growing up in both Zimbabwe and America. The 16-track (13 songs and 3 poems) is a musical awakening that encourages listeners to self-evaluate by embracing their good, analyzing their intentions, and rethinking life’s priorities. It’s truly a testimony to her talent in making songs and poems that uplift, excavate and enlighten. 

Shungudzo wrote all of the lyrics and melodies for all of the tracks entirely on her own, and all of which she either produced and engineered alone or alongside friends. Many of her collaborators on this album are fellow Zimbaweans, which she says was “important for me to use the privilege I have — to be able to make music on an international platform — to give back to others who don’t have that same privilege. Which is why I hired so many Zimbabwean musicians to play on the album. The soul of their playing was the final step in making the album’s heartbeat.”With I’m not a mother, but I have children, Shungudzo brings a worldly feel to her music while honoring these local Zimbabwean musicians. Two of those musicians Kudzai Muwori who plays marimba and Kudzai “KuKays” Mudzimu who plays bass, can be heard on the title track. Shungudzo states, “their additions very much became the heartbeat of the music and lifeline back to where I come from. Faintly, in the background at the end, you can also hear the sound of children playing. It’s the sound of future generations that will live joyously because of the hard work we’re doing today. Or, if you believe in infinity, future generations that are already living joyously because of the hard work we’re doing right now!”.

Made from the angst her and many Americans felt during protests for racial justice across the world last summer, I’m not a mother, but I have children is the result of her knowing it was time to collect her thoughts in the form of music and poetry. “I hope that being open about the range of emotions I’ve felt over the Black experience, the female experience and the human experience encourages other people to be more open about what they’re going through,” she. Examples of these “experiences” can be found on the album’s pre album released singles; “It’s a good day to fight the system,” “To be me,” title track “I’m not a mother, but I have children,” and “White parents.” While “It’s a good day to fight the system” was released in October 2020, shortly before election day, and quickly became a voter’s anthem with lyrics that encouraged everyone, no matter what their race, class or status to make a change in the world “To be me” approached the topic of feeling unsafe in your own body, then later goes into the nuances of being Black in America and being targeted for doing regular things. “White parents” on the other hand brings a taboo topic to centerstage by touching on the fetishization of people of color without the intent to marry or take the relationship to a mature level. The most sentimental of the tracks is the title track, “I’m not a mother, but I have children” and it’s her interpretation of a classic folk protest song mixed with her personal approach to production, songwriting and song structuring. 

Though I’m not a mother, but I have children is Shungudzo’s debut album, it’s certainly not her first encounter in the music industry. She’s had in an impressive collection of songwriting/co-writing credits including with Little Mix, Chiiild, and Jessie Ware, the lattermost includes six tracks featured on her What’s Your Pleasure? album. Shungudzo first started writing at age five when she made a promise to herself to write a poem every day for the rest of her life and then at the age of sixteen, she attended Stanford University and fresh out of college, she started making music, but a lot of doubt from the pressure of the industry compelled her to quit and go into journalism. Her passion for journalism rang loud as she began to expose truth in the world and urged citizens to help, which ultimately led her to becoming the editor-in-chief of Riot. In her downtime, she continued to write songs and eventually, when she couldn’t shake music off her mind, she ultimately quit the job and dove headfirst into the pursuit of music. In addition to being super involved in music and journalism, Shungudzo is also a talented dancer and gymnast and was the first female artistic gymnast of color to compete on the Zimbabwean National Team. 

She hopes that with the release of I’m not a mother, but I have children, she can inspire listeners to ask even the most difficult questions in life and to step away from the album a little bit better. She adds, “I’ve always believed that things have to get better, and that if something has to be, then it will be, she says. “But not without a commitment to bettering ourselves and our communities; to thinking outside of ourselves and instead about future generations of all living things. We have to fight for this planet and everything on it to have a future. And each of us has a special skill that we can contribute to that fight. For me, for now, it’s music.”

Shungudzo’s web/socials: Soundcloud – Facebook – Instagram – Twitter 

Hi! So, things are pretty unsettling in the world due to the pandemic, civil rights issues, government upheaval, climate change, the list goes on… Before we began, how are you doing with everything? How has this last year been for you and how are you feeling? How have you been coping with everything? 

Thank you for asking! I’m all things at once and learning that it’s healthy to acknowledge that one emotion doesn’t have to cancel out another. I’m happy and I’m sad. Feeling courageous and afraid. So tired and so energized. I’m trying to view the emotional spectrum as spherical rather than linear, and to feel the love engrained in every feeling. Most especially the hard ones.
 
I feel like the music industry has shifted even more so during the pandemic. How has it felt as an artist? Has it been freeing? Is it scary trying to question how to approach music making and then how to or if you want to creatively release it to the public?

I feel that shift as well! I’ve always been making the music I’m making, thematically, but I think that a couple of things have happened: The Machine wants to make money off of the “trend” of awareness — just as it profits from all trends — and aware people working for, or within, The Machine finally feel the courage and support needed to fully stand up for what they believe in. The Machine isn’t all bad. It’s made up of lots of wonderful humans who get caught in the cycle like all of us have. Many of those people go on to change The Machine for the better. Meanwhile lots of other people who aren’t in The Machine are building a new and hopefully kinder Machine. Hopefully someday we’ll have TWO awesome Machines in our industry, and within all aspects of society as a whole.

Going back to the beginning. What was your childhood like growing up in Zimbabwe? I read that at age five, you made a promise to yourself to write a poem every day for the rest of your life and your mom trained you about gymnastics at home using tree branches on bars and tape on the ground as a balance beam. Did creativity/music/art play a big part of your childhood? 

I’ve always been creative and am just now realizing all of the ways in which my parents fostered my artistry. They were academically focused, so it was easy for me to feel like their goals for me were in direct conflict with my goals for myself. But now I see how everything they wanted me to be, inwardly, is what I’m now doing outwardly. I may not be in the profession they envisioned for me, but I am the person they hoped I’d become. They also never put down my senses of imagination and observation (internal and external). It’s through these things that I can experience and observe discrimination, inequity and injustice, and then imagine a world free from discrimination, inequity and injustice, and believe that it’s totally possible to create it.  
 
Tell me about your poetry / musical upbringing. What poetry / music did you grow up reading / listening to? I read that you attended Stanford at 15 and as an adult you’re running a journalism company. When did you first become aware that poetry and music were going to be a part of your life? What was your formal / not formal music education like growing up? 

I got into Stanford when I was 16, but I wasn’t a phenomenal student. In school, I was really good at memorizing, but not learning. In life I was, and continue to be, good at learning. I developed a lot of my writing skills via self-evaluation. Writing almost every day and always striving to write as true to my experiences, observations, and intentions as possible. As my inner self developed over time, so did my writing. My mother recently told me that I was reading at 18 months old. I think I ingested a lot of literature as a child and that it really affected my creative brain in beautiful ways. Other than my childhood literary voraciousness, observation has always been my greatest teacher. Both observation of myself and others. And of nature. I suppose we’re nature too! I don’t have any formal musical training, and really don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t think I ever will! But that’s the joy in it! If everyone who’s not doing because they’re afraid of looking like they don’t know what they’re doing just DID, there’d be so much more beautiful art and invention and progress in the world.

Describe your path to becoming involved with music. What’s your very first earliest musical memory? When was the first time you felt super inspired by music? 

As a kid, I climbed a mulberry tree in my family’s garden and sat in it for hours at a time, every day that I could. I listened to the birds, and to the insects and the wind. I heard the sound of the sunbeams and when people on the ground interacted with me, I even felt like I could hear their feelings. Do you even feel like you can hear a “whoosh” when someone calls or texts you? It was kinda like that energetically. My first musical memories are of nature and of the sounds people make without making sounds. My first “words,” according to my mother were me trying to talk to birds, which I still do. There’s music all around us, and that inspires me endlessly!

Let’s talk about your upcoming release I’m not a mother but I have children. What was your songwriting/creative process like for this? Was there a specific moment when work on the lyrics/music for these songs began or does the line between when you’re writing poetry and lyrics sort of blur? 

Music-making, to me, is definitely some kind of blur. But, like, the clearest blur there ever was. I usually follow a feeling or a sentence until the song takes form — I don’t know what it’s gonna be until it is — and that was very much my process for making this album as well. I didn’t even know I was making an album until I’d made an album. I knew I was making a body of work, but I didn’t know that it’d be an album.  
 

How long was the writing/recording process of I’m not a mother but I have children? Was there an event or a specific timeframe where a large chunk of the lyricism came out? 

I set out to write all of the songs on May 7th, 2020, and gave myself until June 7th to finish that part of the process. Before that, I had already written a couple of songs that really resonated with me and guided the intention of the rest of the songs. The production took a lot longer, as it was my first time producing an album. Making this album was a real lesson in trusting my gut and not listening to the voices in my head that aren’t my own, and sometimes tell me I’m inadequate. I worked really hard at hearing those voices, asking whose they were, and — when they weren’t mine — choosing not to let them taint my instinct. Or my ancestors’ instincts. Really, who knows where creativity truly comes from? Even when it’s expressed by a single person, it’s gotta be from more than one mind.
 
Do you find it helpful to be intentional when it comes to writing the lyrics / poetry? Like “I’m going to sit down and work on a song.” Or is it more ephemeral, like you’ve been kicking something around in your head for days, weeks, months, and then suddenly it comes spilling out? Or is it a mixture of both?

I’ve never asked myself this, but through your question realize that I very much kick thoughts and themes around in my brain — as a human, rather than as an artist — and when those thoughts and feelings begin to become recurring, I usually have an “AH-HAH” moment with myself in the form of a singular phrase or sentence. Like a simple way to sum up days, or weeks, or months, years, or a lifetime of thoughts about a certain subject. My self-talk is very much in the form of these epiphany sentences, and that’s what inspires every poem and song I write.
 
As this was your debut full length, what mindset did you have going into the creating / recording process? Did you feel any sort of limitations when writing or recording this album? Are there any interesting stories about the writing/recordings of the lyrics/music?   

I had lots of limitations in the form of the voices of other people, or the system, telling me I couldn’t. But I pushed through them out of curiosity — not knowing if what I was going to make would be good, but knowing that, at the very least, I’d make something. My dog Emerson came into the studio every time I was working on a song I loved, and I decided to let that be a sign that those songs were worth finishing! He was my A&R.
 

What was your favorite part about the writing / album creation process? 

My favorite part is the very first burst of creativity. And also playing the song back the day, or night, I finish that first burst. The actual finishing part is really hard for me, because then it’s not so much about flow as it is about process. I’d like to learn to love finishing as much as I love starting. I feel like that applies to all things in my life. At the moment, I’m most-specifically thinking about when it comes to love.
 
Which songs were the easiest / most difficult to create? What are two or three songs you are most proud of on this record? Why?

“Where are my friends?” was difficult to create because the drummer, Scara — who lived in Zimbabwe —  passed away of an asthma attack before I’d finished arranging his drums. Opening the session and working with his sounds was really hard for me. After a couple months of trying to finish the song, I accepted that I needed both musical and emotional help and reached out to my brilliant friend Shruti Kumar for support. She spotted all of the things I couldn’t see, and couldn’t hear, because I was too sad to see and hear them. If not for her, the song wouldn’t exist as it does now.  It’s all in honor of Scara.

When and how did the album title I’m not a mother but I have children come about in the album creation process? What is the significance of the title? 

I wrote “I’m not a mother, but I have children” after writing a couple songs about motherhood that didn’t quite capture the feeling I was going for. I realized that, in this case, I didn’t want to speak about mothering a child so much as I wanted to speak about the fact that we’re all parents of future generations of all living things. Our existence will impact the world that future people, and plants, and all creatures live in. I don’t know if I’ll ever have children of my own, but I take parenthood, in this sense, very seriously.
 
How much energy do you put into the visuals (music videos, press images, artwork) that accompany your music? Do you feel like the art that accompanies one’s music is more / less important than it used to be? How do you feel like social media impacts the intention behind all of this?

I think visual art is a necessary part of sonic art, just as much as sonic art is a necessary part of visual art. The two are made to exist with each other. That’s why movies have soundtracks and soundtracks ought to have movies. When it comes to my visuals, I tend to come up with lots of ideas I don’t like, stop thinking about it, and then instantaneously get a burst of creativity that I run with. Usually something that encompasses the intention of every idea I don’t use. All of the “bad” ideas lead me to the “good” ones. With visuals, and with music, I really believe that anything is possible so long as good intention is what I’m striving for over perfection. I don’t think about social media much because it gives me anxiety! I try to create without thinking about what other people will think, in a critical sense, because as soon as I think about being judged, I limit myself. One of my managers, Mark Nesbitt, has really helped me feel free with my visual ideas. He’s shot and edited most of the visuals you’ve seen and I don’t feel afraid when he’s holding the camera.