Machanic Manyeruke and the gospel music scene in Africa

In his new documentary Machanic Manyeruke: The Life of Zimbabwe’s Gospel Music Legend, filmmaker James Ault reminds us of the effervescent worship culture that thrives across Christian Africa. So much of this music will be instantly recognizable to West­ern viewers, in its themes as well as its instruments—Machanic Manyeruke shat­tered convention by bringing electric guitars into praise music. Yet at every point, this music has its own African identity.

Born in 1942, Manyeruke began his musical career in the Salvation Army in the 1960s. (He earned the name Machanic because he was constantly tinkering with machinery as a child.) By the 1980s, he and his group, the Puritans, were profiting from a gospel music boom in newly independent Zimbabwe.

The high points of Ault’s film, which is available to stream for free on Vimeo, are the concert performances and the responses of the very enthusiastic crowds. Manyeruke’s music ranges widely in its themes. It includes some general (and very catchy) songs of praise and devotion: “God, you’re good, you’re wonderful!” Other songs present memorable renderings of biblical stories as a form of study and evangelism. Some familiar passages acquire a powerful new resonance in a society deeply concerned with spiritual warfare. Manyeruke’s song about the man possessed by evil spirits, by Legion, has the chilling chorus line “Demons . . . in the graveyard!”