Aces of Trades: Tinashe Makura finds community at Spring Hills Baptist Church in Granville
GRANVILLE – He’s a musician from Zimbabwe, now living and performing locally — and internationally.
“My dream was to either become a doctor, a lawyer or an astronaut,” Tinashe Makura said. “I just had an inclination that I wanted to do something meaningful and substantive. I suppose that was influenced by observing how both my parents served people. I never thought I’d end up being a musician at all.”
Today, Makura is indeed a musician.
“My first exposure to professional recording was in 1999,” he said. “In 2005 I wrote, recorded and released my first ever professional single titled ‘Changed.’ From 2010-2012, I was a voice-over artist in Malaysia. In 2014, I released another single ‘Zvekupenga.’ It was a global collaboration of artists who were separated by distance but created a No. 1 hit single in Zimbabwe for 15 weeks straight. In 2023, I was a composer and vocal performer for a soundtrack to a Disney short film ‘Kizazi Moto.’ It’s a sci-fi animated short film series produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. In 2024, I’m releasing my latest Single ‘Bold Enough.’ I'm excited to share this new release soon.”
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Makura is also the associate director of worship and operations at Spring Hills Baptist Church in Granville.
“I’m the ‘director of turning burdens into blessings, lemons to lemonade,’” he said. “I play keys and guitar, but the instrument God has given me is my voice: I sing.”
Makura grew up in Harare, Zimbabwe, graduated from high school there, went to college in Malaysia and eventually graduated from Southern New Hampshire University with a degree in international business management. He moved to the US in 2019.
“I come from a musical family,” he said. “My late dad loved singing and playing guitar, and my mom played the piano. As a pastor’s kid, I grew up being exposed to Christian music and all kinds of instruments. Then, when I was 9 years old, I watched a VHS recording of The Jackson 5 in concert. I had never seen a young boy singing to thousands of people. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a musician. This sparked a curiosity within me to explore and learn more about creating music.”
Makura first learned to play the trumpet when he was 9, he said, “by merely observing and mimicking the ‘brass band’ players at our local church. Little did I know I was memorizing finger patterns and associating them to their respective sounds/notes. This is the model I still use today with my songwriting and compositions. I instinctively follow my emotions to their core to extract melodies, rhythms, words and phrases that express the essence of the environments I’ve seen, heard and experienced.”
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Tom Pound is senior pastor at Spring Hills Baptist Church.
“We are absolutely thrilled to have Tinashe on staff,” Pound said. “Tinashe is an incredibly talented musician, but he is an even better person. It’s a true blessing to see God work through him as he leads worship here at Spring Hills.”
“It’s who I am at the core,” Makura said. “My family and I partnered with Spring Hills Church when I was still in Zimbabwe by helping them implement humanitarian projects in Zimbabwe. Spring Hills has been a part of my community before I even set foot in the U.S. It’s amazing how a people are bound together beyond borders, distance and other limitations.”
Aces of Trades is a weekly series focusing on people and their jobs — whether they’re unusual jobs, fun jobs or people who take ordinary jobs and make them extraordinary. If you have a suggestion for a future profile, let us know at advocate@newarkadvocate.com.
More about Tinashe Makura
For more information about Tinashe Makura, log on www.makuramusic.com.
This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Aces of Trades: Tinashe Makura finds community at Spring Hills Baptist
