Oliver “Tuku” Mtukudzi’s music is slow cooked, lovingly tended and with just the right amount of seasoning. Or, if you don’t much like cooking metaphors, how’s this: it's solid. Given that the Zimbabwean guitarist and mbira player has been releasing albums since the mid-'70s (roughly five dozen to date), it’s not a surprise. His new album, Sarawoga, comes out next week, and CBC Music streams it until that time. To find out more about Mtukudzi, read on.

The man: Mtukudzi grew up in Harare, in what was then Rhodesia, a European-dominated colony. Despite a secondary education he couldn’t get a job, as his CBC Music page says, "because I black.” In 1975 he released a successful single and performed with Thomas Mapfumo, electrifying traditional music — and audiences. Mtukudzi's music career was underway.

Aside from music, Mtukudzi has made films, helped create an arts centre and mentored numerous young artists. He’s also worked to raise awareness of AIDS, having lost numerous family and friends to the disease. Weirdly, in early 2013,rumours began to spread that he was both HIV-positive, and that he had died. In 2011, he was appointed as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador to raise HIV and AIDS awareness in eastern and southern Africa.

The message: Before Zimbabwean independence (1980), Mtukudzi's message was about oppression against what he saw as a repressive regime. Now he writes about the stuff of life the world over — hope, loss, childhood, community. It’s poetry, sung in the Shona language, which is heavily metaphorical. As Mtukudzi says, the tradition of metaphors in Shona “is not only the most beautiful but the best way to express many things. It gives a full view of life, lots of life.”

The music: Gracious, dignified and melodic; a place where Zimbabwean traditions incorporate pop and pan-African influences. “Tuku” is both a nickname and a way that fans describe the music. It's positive-sounding music, although Sarawoga has its sombre moments, and is dedicated to his late son, Sam Mtukudzi, who died in 2012.