Two Tone (magazine)

Published in 1954, Two Tone was a quarterly of Rhodesian poetry magazine, which signified a radical break with the largely conservative Eurocentric academic traditions which until then had dominated Zimbabwean poetry. Publishing poetry by both black and white writers working, predominantly in English but also in Ndebele and Shona, it challenged divisions and created a new open field for expression in divergent poetic voices and styles.

Publishing

While the magazine was published in association with the National Arts Foundation of Rhodesia^[1] and the University of Rhodesia's English Department the selection process was left to the journal's rotating board of editors, whose focus on "good writing," "technical skill," "stylistic innovation" and "authentic expression" provided a foundation for much of the groundbreaking new literature that exploded in Zimbabwe in the 1970.

Content and Themes

Two Tone prioritised the author of the imagination rather than the revisionist historian or political revolutionary - a position which became increasing tenuous during the oppressive years of the Ian Smith regime. The magazine received scathing criticism from academics, political activist and many black poets who increasingly saw it as a "banal" and "pretentious outlet" for a closed minority of "White literati", whose "patronizing approach" to black writing supported the political status quo. The antagonism was only exacerbated by the publication of defensive editorials which argued that "separatism and elitism" create the assurances of liberty to "foster imaginative literature."

Despite the controversy, the journal's legacy is secured through the writing of seminal contemporary Zimbabwean poets such as D. F. Middleton, Julius Chingono, Charles Mungoshi, Bonus Zimunya and John Eppel, all of whom began their literary careers on the pages of Two Tone.

Footnotes

1. see external links

References

As of 29 September 2009, this article is derived in whole or in part from Chimurenga Library. The copyright holder has licensed the content in a manner that permits reuse under CC BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL. All relevant terms must be followed. The original text was at "TWO TONE".

• Two Tone XIII March 1977, editorial by Olive Robertson, p2
• Two Tone XIII, September 1977, editorial by V. Crawford, p1-4
• R. Graham, "Poetry In Rhodesia," Zambezia: The Journal. of Humanities of the University of Zimbabwe VI ii), 1978, ip208
• John Reed. ""Emergence of English Writing in Zimbabwe," European-language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1986, p251
• Robert Muponde, Ranka Primorac. Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture, African Book Collective, 2005

External links

• Zimbabwe — Poetry International Web
• National Arts Council of Zimbabwe website