| Biography | Mbande was born in 1930, and raised at Chisiko and Homoine, in the Inhambane Province of Mozambique. He learned to play timbila from his uncle and other relatives by the age of six. At the age of 18 in 1948 he went to the gold mines in Johannesburg, South Africa. Going to work on the mines, apart from the much-needed earnings in poverty-ridden Mozambique, had for Chopi youths largely taken the place of wukwera, the traditional Chopi boys' initiation and circumcision. Venancio worked underground for ten years, by 1956 had formed his own timbila orchestra and began composing for them.
This became his life work, as he considered his mine orchestra to be a musical training ground for young Chopi men. He ruled his orchestra and dancers with a strict but kindly hand to ensure that their standard, as every Chopi agreed, was always equal or better than that of their home orchestras. The situation for Chopi mineworkers worsened during the civil war 1975-1995. Venancio's orchestra 'in exile' was the only Chopi orchestra functioning during that time; as many as 500 musicians and dancers may have passed through his hands. He tried to ensure that any potentially musical young man recruited for the mines was unobtrusively directed towards 'his' mine, where, as he felt with justification, he was single-handedly supporting Chopi tradition.
Mbande retired from the mines in 1995, and returned to Chopiland to live in the house he had built for himself and his wives near Helene. He immediately started to put into practice his lifelong ambition to run a 'school of timbila' and set to training players and dancers from his district of (former chief) Chisiko, many of whom had been with him on the mine, some even having moved there from other districts in order to be near him and his music. |