On October 28, VaChikepe The Poet will release A Dollar, a seven-song album that hears him expressing his thoughts in English for the first time.

The Zimbabwean artiste’s previous work was done in his native Shona language.

Recording songs in English, he hopes, will introduce him to a broader market.

“I would love A Dollar to reach mainstream audiences, from Zimbabwe and the wider African continent to Jamaica, the Caribbean, North America and beyond. But I don’t want my existing audience to meet a stranger when they hear it,” he told Observer Online. “I want them to recognise the same VaChikepe The Poet, storyteller, social observer and spiritual thinker they have travelled with, only now sailing into wider waters.”

From Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, he was raised on the poems of Shona artistes. VaChikepe The Poet — who won the International Reggae and World Music Awards’ Best Poet category in 2021 — also listened to Jamaican firebrands like Bob Marley and Mutabaruka.

Three years ago, he met Jamaican poet Richie Innocent at a convention in Virginia and struck up a friendship. In 2024, he was one of the performers on the inaugural Poetry Echoes Of Expression, staged by Richie Innocent in New York.

“Richie Innocent brought me much closer to Jamaican poetry, culture and love. Through that relationship, Jamaica became more than a country I admired from a distance,” said VaChikepe The Poet. “I began encountering its people, rhythms, language, history and extraordinary tradition of using the spoken word as a vehicle for consciousness.”

An ordained minister of religion, he holds a masters degree in Divinity from Duke University in North Carolina. As he seeks a wider audience, VaChikepe The Poet says there are no plans to turn his back on his roots.

“My base has known me primarily as VaChikepe: The Poet, a Zimbabwean poet deeply rooted in Shona language, African culture, spirituality, social commentary and the spoken-word tradition,” he noted. “I don’t want to abandon that identity in order to reach a wider audience. In fact, I believe that identity is precisely what I have to offer the wider world.”

—   Howard Campbell