Rise Up (Thomas Mapfumo album)
[4] While Mapfumo was allowed to travel to Zimbabwe, his more recent music continued to be banned from the country's radio airwaves and was difficult to find in stores.[12] Robert Christgau determined that "good riffs do still come to Mapfumo, especially when he's pondering his loss of a home market."[14] The Financial Times wrote: "Rich with brass stabs and spiky guitar meshing with the metallic sound of mbira thumb pianos, for the most part Rise Up lopes easily."[16] Pitchfork noted that "the synth-bass prodding 'Ndodya Marasha (I'm Mad as Hell)' lends an almost imperceptible urgency to the repetitive, deceptively static chord progression, until an upbeat break busts you out of the funk."[17] AllMusic deemed the album "a tough, gritty, graceful recording that captures the heartbreak, dislocation, pain, and hope of the struggle in the grain of Mapfumo's voice and in the endlessly entrancing echo of the mbira.