Forewarned Is Forearmed: Exploring the Apocalyptic Voice of Popular Music in the Post-colonial Zimbabwe

Abstract

This chapter focuses on a semiotic and content analysis of the purposively sampled song to argue for the premise that musicians are prophetic or apocalyptic in their songs. The voices of disgruntlement at the height of the Zimbabwean political and economic crises in the late 1990s, and the peak of land grab in the early 2000s, are analysed. The events that followed the voices of warning are also explored, and conclusions are drawn as to whether the indigenous popular musicians are prophetic or not. The chapter avers that songs are (media) texts that can construct and disseminate images of a future society basing on what is currently obtaining, thereby acting as trumpets of their particular time.