In a recent airing of Popcorn with Peter Travis on ABC news, award-winning Zimbabwean-American playwright and actress, Danai Gurira, who stars as Okoye, the leader of the Dora Milaje (the elite all-female fighting force that protects the leaders of Wakanda) in the marvel movie Black Panther showed off her singing skills and shone some light on her Shona cultural heritage as she gave a beautiful rendition of the Shona spiritual, “Makanaka Baba”.
In the interview the Black Panther actress who also plays Michonne in the TV hit series, ” The Walking Dead” briefly narrates how she added the hymn to one of her plays, ‘the Convert’ before going ahead to sing the hymn in her native tongue, Shona, a Bantu language most widely spoken in Zimbabwe.
Watch the video here: