Outside the house, there are no laws: musical practice and ritual dynamics at Shona kurova guva ceremonies

ABSTRACT In Zimbabwe, the ceremony known as kurova guva is widely held by Shona speakers in order to reintegrate deceased family members within the patrilineage as ancestral spirits, or vadzimu. Conducted a year after burial, kurova guva involves a heterogeneous musical environment that distinguishes it from other ritual events described in the literature on Zimbabwean music. Held by traditionalists and members of several Christian denominations, the ceremony also offers a potent reminder that indigenous ritual remains a vibrant part of the contemporary Zimbabwean experience. I illustrate how music is a central mode of ritual practice at kurova guva, where it is considered ritually efficacious in enabling participants to reclaim the spirit of the deceased as a lineage ancestor. At the same time, I suggest that musical practice also participates in the continual renegotiation, articulation, and social production of the ritual contours of kurova guva. Through the negotiation of music’s spatial and temporal dimensions, I illustrate how participants at kurova guva express the structured ambiguity at the heart of ritual process. My analysis suggests that the gap between discursive expectations and actualised musical experience constitutes a productive site for ethnomusicological analysis.