He was born and grew up in Zimbabwe. He did his BA Hons. at the University of Zimbabwe and finished his graduate studies at Dalhousie University (Canada) in 2008. Before joining the University California, Chikowero was a postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers University’s Center for Historical Analysis in 2009. His book on Zimbabwean music and power, African Music, Power and Being: Colonial Zimbabwe is forthcoming with Indiana University Press. He is currently an American Council of Learned Scholars Visiting Research Fellow at Wits—the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg where he working on two book projects: music and power in post-colonial Zimbabwe and on broadcasting and state-making in colonial Southern Africa. His publications have appeared in key journals on Southern Africa and in edited volumes.