Bread Scores is a live, collaborative piece created by Masimba Hwati in 2021 during his Radio Art Residency in Weimar. In the work, Masimba and seven performers sit, encircling a round patch of sand with a large bowl of dinner rolls placed in the center. Within each piece of bread is a graphic score, or a message to the recipient, for them to interpret and translate through their voice or instrument. This rather esoteric compositional method is directly connected to the Chimurenga War or Zimbabwean liberation struggle (1964-1979), where innocuous loaves of bread became the vehicles for private messages, and pirate radio. Activists, and loved ones would embed hidden messages—newspaper clippings, updates on the struggle, words of solidarity, and love letters—within the loaves to provide solace and support to captured liberation fighters. Some loaves were large enough to hide radios within and were used to tune into guerilla broadcasts from Mozambique and Zambia.

Bread Scores extends this historical narrative into the realm of post-colonial sound art. By embedding musical scores inspired by traditional Chimurenga chants of resistance within the bread, he transforms these loaves into vessels of cultural memory and sonic protest. Musicians are then invited to decipher these scores, creating performances that resonate with the echoes of struggle and resilience. In his introduction to the piece, Hwati explains, “Negotiation—improvisation—is at the root of this poetic celebration. To celebrate ways in which people can still resist, or negotiate with the system…All over the world we face all sorts of despotic and oppressive regimes and governments, and all over the world people find ways in which to go through the cracks and the slippage and the gaps that the system leaves.”

In the performance video, we may see instruments scattered throughout the space. A baritone ukulele is plugged into a looping pedal, a toy piano next to the loaves makes the bread appear enormous, and a performer adjusting the bridge of their homemade ngoni. The work begins with a field recording of a Zimbabwean elder encouraging young people to explore their culture, which is quickly processed and rearranged as Hwati hands out loaves of bread to the participants. Performers break the bread to reveal their message; their short melodic motifs are accompanied by Hwati slowly pouring handfuls of sand against a contact microphone. The artist enacts the process of covert messaging by picking loaves to then share with other performers; in essence creating a telephone-game collage between selector, object, and interpreter. What emerges is a fragile, ambiguous texture which emphasizes the distance traveled by liberation messages.

Bread Scores was performed on May 21, 2021, live on Radio Lotte, bauhaus.fm as part of Masimba Hwati’s residency at the Goethe-Institut and Experimental Radio at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Participants included Markus Westphal, Michael Fischer, Vivien Mercedes Mercedes Jester, Laura Anh Thu Dang, Dean Ruddock, Mkoma Luka Mukhavhele, Georg Milz and Eleftherios Krysalis. -Described by Wave Farm Radio Art Fellow 2024, Austin T. Richey