"I just have to get out of the way so the spirits can make my mbira play -- it isn't me -- I'm just amazed," says Forward Kwenda, who as a child in Zimbabwe was informed by powerful rain-making spirits that he was to devote his life to playing music for their ceremonies. A part of the rituals of Zimbabwe's Shona people for more than a millennium, the mbira dzavadzimu (mbira of the ancestor spirits), is made of two dozen metal keys mounted on a wood soundboard inside a resonating calabash gourd, played with the thumbs and one finger, producing entrancingly melodic music with invigorating polyphony and polyrhythms. Kwenda, one of the country's most respected mbira artists, taught himself to play as a child before studying with elder masters in his teenage years, later gaining international acclaim for his virtuosity, soulfulness, and unprecedented range of melodic and rhythmic improvisation. Tonight Kwenda performs compositions from his recent album, Nemakonde Through The Night, which emphasizes the healing quality of the music, asking the spirits for peace, light, and wisdom.