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Rewriting Fatherhood in Shona Popular Music: Ethical and Emotional Labour in Alick Macheso’s Baba VaSandy
Innocent Tinashe Mutero
Published: 2026/06/01
Abstract
This article examines Alick Macheso’s Shona song Baba VaSandy as a site for negotiating, critiquing, and reimagining fatherhood in contemporary Zimbabwe. Drawing on multivocal ethnomusicological frameworks and critical masculinity scholarship, the study analyses the song’s lyrical narrative alongside its digital reception. This qualitative study uses verse-by-verse textual analysis and thematic interpretation of YouTube comments to trace public engagement and moral reflection. The analysis highlights five interrelated dimensions: children as moral witnesses to paternal failure; the temporal and ritual politics of arrival; the intergenerational consequences of neglect framed through dzinza (lineage); the affective and somatic imprint of domestic conflict; and the de-commodification of care, in which love (rudo) is enacted through presence, attentiveness, and relational labour rather than material provision. The study integrates African philosophical and Southern African ethnomusicological perspectives to demonstrate how Baba VaSandy functions as a moral pedagogy, offering culturally grounded tools for evaluating, critiquing, and reshaping masculinities. The study contributes to literature on African fatherhood, popular music as ethical practice, and the role of digital media in mediating social discourse, showing that popular songs can generate public moral reflection and advance alternative forms of paternal authority.
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