More than four decades after Thomas Mapfumo fused mbira patterns with electric guitar to create chimurenga music, a new wave of young producers is sampling his catalogue for an audience that mostly knows him, if at all, through a thirty-second clip.

The results range from straightforward remixes to more ambitious reworkings that place his vocal lines over amapiano-influenced production — a pairing that shouldn't work on paper but has found real traction on Zimbabwean and South African playlists alike.

Mapfumo's estate has taken a permissive approach to sampling, with representatives noting that the music was always meant to travel and adapt rather than sit still.

"He was already doing something radical by putting mbira through a guitar amp," said one Harare-based producer behind several of the reworkings. "Sampling him for a beat is honestly a pretty small step by comparison."