Hope Masike

Hailed as one of Zimbabwe's Mbira music custodians, Hope Masike has been bringing her brand of Zimbabwean music to diverse global audiences since 2007. Masike's music is a fun-filled hybrid of music styles tied together by her signature sublime Mbira playing, sultry voice, and highly-charged performances. She takes to stage with an impressive entertaining showpersonship, performing her unique brand of African music with an energetic Zimbabwean band comprising Mbira and modern instruments. She mostly sings in beautiful, little-known African languages like her mother tongue, Shona. Her live performances seamlessly move from classic Zimbabwean traditional music to Africa's modern music.

Hope Masike draws her inspiration from all things Art and Africa, leaning very heavily on nearly a century of a strong Mbira music legacy but not ignoring the obvious influences from modernity. She has brilliant hopes for the future of Africa and basks in carrying her African culture with her all the time. Fans come to a Hope Masike concert to have fun, feed their spirituality and experience the beautiful Zimbabwean culture. She takes pride in her culture and heritage, often challenging colonial-induced stigma against it and championing it's documentation and fresh, youthful re-packaging both through her music and brand.

Hope Masike has collaborated with other musicians such as Salif Keita, the late Oliver Mtukudzi, Steve Dyer and Louis Mhlanga. She has several international tour credits including performing in Southern Africa, Asia, Europe and the west coast of America. Her versatile music approach has seen her venture into different music collaborations of note such as with the AfroNordic outfit, Monoswezi, the Southern African collaborative, Mahube and the Austrian-Zimbabwean collaboration named 'Kunzwana'. She has also collaborated with Zimbabwean alternative Hip Hop outfit The Monkey Nuts and American horn band, The Huntertones among many others. In the early years of her career she was part of the Norwegian cultural exchange programme Umoja CFC which composed Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa and Norway; and Onebeat music exchange programme which comprised numerous different countries including Zimbabwe and USA.