The Zimbabwe Musicians Union in partnership with the Music Crossroads Academy Zimbabwe kicked off the month of June with a drumming workshop hosted at the MCAZ. 

The drum workshop kicked off at 10am and had 26 participants. All were engaging as the facilitators were given their brief background of who they are in the music industry and how they started drumming.

Othnell Moyo, popularly known as Mangoma is a well-rounded musician and drummer par excellence. He has collaborated with various musicians from Zimbabwe and across the globe. He has toured internationally and been featured in documentaries on drum making and playing. Mangoma gave a warm-up exercise on congas hand techniques which showed the participants the basics of how to play congas as most of them were beginners.  To close off his set demonstration, Mangoma called everyone to join in as he introduced the township rhythms. 

Peter Makanya demonstrated how to set up the drum set and showed how important it is to have a drum stool. Speaking on the importance of the posture he highlighted that “it is important because it will help you avoid future back problems and the stool will help you with the right posture”. He went on to further demonstrate how to handle the drum sticks and  care for the drum

Speaking at the workshop, the union’s communications officer Nancy Mutize gave a brief background of what the Zimbabwean Musicians Union is and she distributed membership application forms to the musicians attending the workshop who expressed interest. 

The workshop was graced with drum performances from Kidz Inspire, an MCAZ children’s music class and gave a glimpse of what the Kidz inspire program does at the academy. After the children gave a brilliant performance, MCAZ grace a presentation by Noel Jiri about the programs run by the academy. 

Collen Tom, a teacher at the academy and renowned drummer demonstrated drum notation skills and also demonstrated how to can use all the tools that were shared by the other speakers and apply them to the drum set

To close off, there was a performance by all the facilitators and another acoustic performance by  Ritzy, a former student at MCAZ. 

The union will continue to run monthly music and music business workshops to empower and present opportunities to the musicians in Zimbabwe.