Some artists get their big break at home and then go looking for the world. VaChikepe The Poet did it the other way round. The Norton-raised spoken-word artist made his name in Shona, found an early champion in Jamaica, and has now announced his first album in English.
A Dollar is a seven-track album due on 28 October. The Jamaica Observer broke the news on 13 September, which says a lot about where some of his biggest supporters are.
Why English, and why now
VaChikepe told the Observer that the switch is about reach. He wants the album to travel from Africa to Jamaica, the Caribbean and North America, audiences that his Shona work couldn't fully reach. He was also careful to say he isn't reinventing himself. He doesn't want his existing listeners "to meet a stranger," he said, and he told the paper that his Shona-rooted identity is what he has to offer a wider audience.
That fits how he has always worked. Born Takudzwa Chikepe, he told The Daily Tar Heel that he started writing poetry at around 19, after teaching himself to read Shona at boarding school. Building on the language wasn't inherited comfort, it was something he worked at.
A poet with a Caribbean following
His strongest recognition so far has come from the reggae world. In 2021, according to The Local Reporter, he became the first African to win the Mutabaruka Award for Best Poet at the International Reggae and World Music Awards, named after the Jamaican dub poet. He has also received a Norton Achievers Award at home.
The religious thread in his work runs through the new album too. He is an ordained minister, and in posts about A Dollar on his LinkedIn page he describes track four, Gods, as the most theological piece on the record. It's about the difference between a god people control and one that genuinely meets them. Track six, God's Promise, draws on the Book of Numbers and was, he says, inspired by Jamaica.
The old argument, a new answer
The language question is not new in Zimbabwe. Novelist Ignatius Mabasa, writing for amaBooks earlier this year, still describes choosing Shona as an act of resistance against the idea that serious literature has to be in English. VaChikepe's move could be read as stepping away from that position.
His answer, as he put it to the Observer, is that he isn't choosing between them. The ideas, images and faith are rooted in Shona. English is the vehicle to get them further. Whether that holds up will show on 28 October, and the test will be whether A Dollar still sounds like a poet from Katanga, not a poet trying to sound like somebody else.
What it means for spoken word at home
Zimbabwean spoken word rarely gets album-length releases or international press. A poet announcing a full album through a Jamaican national newspaper is a reminder that there are audiences for this work well beyond the open-mic circuit. For younger poets, A Dollar is worth watching as a model of how to take the craft to international listeners without giving up its roots.
Sources
- VaChikepe The Poet to release new album, Jamaica Observer
- African poet seeks to make new history in Chapel Hill, The Local Reporter
- Zimbabwean poet Takudzwa Chikepe uses Bible and African language to inspire poetry, The Daily Tar Heel
- What are gods? Track number 4, VaChikepe on LinkedIn
- The black man cannot write: storytelling is my other mother, amaBooks
