JoriBuchel

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Jori Buchel (1987) is a mbira player from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She grew up playing the classical violin and started playing mbira while studying Cultural Musicology in Amsterdam in 2006. From 2016-2019 she performed together with mbira maestro Chartwell Dutiro, as Mystic Mbira Music at festivals, conferences and universities in the UK, The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. She was also involved in other musical collaborations, like Spirit Talk Mbira, Mbira Sisters and Kusanganisa. In 2019 Chartwell and Jori recorded the album Musumo - Calling Ancestors, traditional mbira music from Zimbabwe. The mbira is an ancient instrument, consisting of at least 22 iron keys mounted on a wooden soundboard and placed in a gourd often played in all-night ritual ceremonies (bira). This ritual of calling the ancestral spirits for guidance has been carried out in Zimbabwe for centuries. The mbira is a powerful potential medium for building bridges and making connections between cultures.