The 70s rock band placing ‘Zamrock’ again on the map, 50 years on

Mixing the model of The Rolling Stones with African beats and devices, Zambian group Witch had been revolutionary – then disappeared. Nobody may have predicted their superb return.

Within the early Seventies, Zambia produced a singular music scene of its personal creation. Zamrock, because it grew to become identified, was the southern African nation’s tackle western rock music – a take that blended the sounds of The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath with its personal fuzz-guitar psychedelia and African instrumentation, beats and rhythms. Cast in a foreign country’s independence from its British colonisers in 1964, its blossoming got here throughout one of the crucial important, fascinating and affluent intervals in Zambian historical past, and its decline and fall mirrored that of Zambia itself within the late Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties. A as soon as thriving native music scene grew to become devastated by financial, cultural and well being components that additionally decimated the broader inhabitants, leaving Zamrock as a relic, unknown outdoors of its personal area.

But over 50 years later, Zamrock is having fun with an ongoing revival. Whereas lots of the scene’s originators – acts just like the influential Rikki Ilonga and his band Musi-O-Tunya, The Ngozi Household, The Peace and Amanaz – have lengthy since both died, stopped performing or are little identified, one band has introduced Zamrock to a recent world viewers. Shaped in 1971, Witch (an acronym for “We Intend to Trigger Havoc”) had been the scene’s largest and hottest band. Fronted by the charismatic Emmanuel Chanda – higher generally known as “Jagari”, a reputation impressed by Mick Jagger – Witch launched 5 albums between 1972 and 1977 that epitomise the Zamrock sound. “We had the affect of rock and roll, however we had been Africans, so we could not play the precise rock and roll,” Jagari tells the BBC. “We needed to fuse some issues in.”

Witch’s unlikely rediscovery began in 2011, when Now-Once more Data launched a compilation of the band’s music, We Intend to Trigger Havoc!, resulting in a resurrection that has seen Witch tour the world, launch new music and turn out to be the topic of Italian film-maker Gio Arlotta’s 2019 documentary, We Intend To Trigger Havoc. “It is laborious to not be blown away if you hear Witch,” says Now-Once more founder Eothen Alapatt, generally known as Egon. “The primary two Witch information  [1972’s Introduction and 1974’s In the Past] have this storage, Rolling Stones sort of vibe to them, and people are actually nice. They’re heavy and simply actually uncooked expressions of rock music. However then you definately get to the third one [1975’s Lazy Bones] and out of nowhere, it turns into like this progressive psychedelic factor. I used to be like, ‘There needs to be a breadth of music right here that is value exploring.'”

The Witch revival has unfold far and large, resulting in renewed curiosity in Zamrock as an entire. Jack White is a fan, releasing Witch reside music on his Third Man Data label; Beastie Boys’ Mike D, Clairo and Madlib are admirers. Furthermore, rappers Tyler, The Creator, Travis Scott and Yves Tumour have all just lately sampled Zamrock bands, extending the style’s sphere of affect to the largest names in cutting-edge hip hop. This week, they launch a brand new album, Sogolo, whereas later this month they may turn out to be the primary Zamrock band to carry out at Glastonbury Competition. “Zamrock is going through a rebirth, for those who like,” Jagari says. “It had died down, it had sunk in oblivion. However the curiosity is rising.” 

Zamrock originated amid the copper mines of northern Zambia, identified then as Northern Rhodesia. Jagari had grown up in a single such space, Kitwe, having moved there on the age of eight to be introduced up by his older brother. “The colonial masters did not utterly neglect the black group,” Jagari says, and it was on the weekend social golf equipment constructed for the miners {that a} younger Jagari first noticed music carried out. “Within the village, I heard individuals sing, and I noticed them dance. These little issues caught in my head.”

Jagari would take heed to a radio station in Mozambique that performed the UK high 40 (usually when his brother was working night time shifts) in addition to jukeboxes in pubs. He was a part of a era hooked on western acts, who needed to play their music. “Whoever performed the guitar throughout that point was judged by how properly he would play [Jimi Hendrix’s] Hey Joe,” Jagari smiles.

Inspired by his schoolfriends, who noticed him dance and mime at native ballrooms, Jagari auditioned for the band that grew to become Witch. He modified his identify as a result of he reminded pals of Jagger when performing, though he was initially ambivalent about making the swap. “That bothered me. I do not need to reside in someone’s shadow. Yeah, he is an incredible man. However I am an African and my nostril is flat, and the way can I be in comparison with somebody?” However he went to the dictionary and found Jagari “meant a brewer of darkish brown sugar [in the local language]. Now it made sense to me.”

It was Zambian Independence in 1964 that laid the cultural foundations for Zamrock. The financial growth that adopted, due to the rise in demand for copper, had a twofold impact: permitting individuals extra disposable earnings to spend on going out and on shopping for devices, and giving them extra publicity to western music on TV and movie. However what made a better distinction was President Kenneth Kaunda’s “Zambia first” coverage. As a former musician himself, Kaunda needed to advertise native expertise and gave bands the platform to succeed, ruling that 95% of radio play ought to go to Zambian artists. “He declared that we should always not all the time be copycats,” Jagari says. “So it opened Pandora’s field, musically. Now everybody had a possibility to go and report in order that they may very well be heard on the radio.”

For Jagari and Witch, this meant that rehearsals cultivated a merging of western and African sounds. Witch would follow covers within the morning, then “after lunch, we had been experimenting with our personal concepts. And it labored,” says Jagari. He calls what they got here up with as “the Zambian sort of rock and roll. That is the Zamrock interpretation. Once we tried them on the gigs, we discovered the viewers had been overwhelmed. So then we had a possibility.” With no actual infrastructure – recording studios had been rudimentary, even the  studio in Zambian capital Lusaka the place Witch made 1975’s highpoint Lazy Bones – and no actual report business to talk of, Witch self-released Introduction, the primary ever Zamrock report, printing the vinyl in Nairobi, and offered it at their very own exhibits. “I got here with 300 copies, as a result of they had been all we may carry, and in two exhibits, they had been gone. As a result of for the individuals, it was the primary time they had been going to have a neighborhood band, having native materials and a neighborhood report out, so everybody needed to have a replica.” Witch self-released their first two albums, however would finally launch music underneath a subsidiary of Teal Data.  

Zamrock was quickly thriving. “There was the unique aspect of it being the one scene in Africa that performed such fuzzed-out guitars and had been actually into this heavier aspect of rock music,” says Arlotta. “While in Nigeria it was funky, in Ethiopia it is extra jazz and so forth.” Whereas Witch went heavy on the psych-rock, different acts took the identical supply materials and took barely completely different approaches. “The Zambian scene has all of the subgenres,” Egon says. “It was full. And that you do not actually discover in lots of scenes.” 

Witch’s gigs are the stuff of legend – they toured in a truck with a cover emblazoned with the phrases: “Trespassers will probably be eaten” – and had been must-see occasions: these marathon exhibits may final from 7pm to 2am, and had been so in style that there crowds outdoors the venues, locked out however clamouring to return in. The Instances of Zambia as soon as wrote: “The corridor the place the boys performed had its roof ripped off as exuberant followers tried to seek out their manner via the home windows.” Jagari earned a status as a wild and flamboyant frontman. “He simply strikes round like a madman,” Arlotta says. “He is a really laborious employee, on stage he offers it 110% each single time.” “I do not know whether or not we should always name it a secret capability,” Jagari says. “I do not often plan my strikes, I let the music decide what I ought to do.”

Maybe one stunning facet of Zamrock was its lack of politics. When you would possibly assume a scene spawned from a selected locale identified for its historic struggles would possibly carry with it a message, there was – initially not less than – little angst or social commentary. That did change in direction of the tip of the scene – Witch’s 1975 monitor Motherless Youngster being one such instance – however for Zamrock bands, most of whom sang in English, music was a celebration of freedom.  

“Initially, after I first heard Zamrock, I assumed it was a really rebellious type of music,” Arlotta says. “After I spoke to the folks that lived it, I realised that that they had received the battle for his or her independence 10 years previous to that. So it was extra of an aesthetic and a style that they adopted. There’s lots of the lesser identified Zamrock songs that reward the President, saying, ‘He is our chief,’ ‘We love Zambia,’ and stuff like that. You suppose it is punk, but it surely’s actually not. Its [sentiment is]: “We had been free doing no matter we needed.'”

Finally, although, politics grew to become unattainable to disregard. Like most scenes, Zamrock could not final. However its eventual decline was gradual, devastating, and hooked up to a lot wider existential occasions throughout the nation. Copper accounted for 95% of Zambia’s exports, so when the worth of the steel fell dramatically within the mid-70s, it caused a pointy financial decline. “If it’s a must to debate between shopping for [music] or shopping for a bag of staple meals, that impacts negatively,” Jagari says. “And to an extent, musical devices had been thought to be luxurious. They attracted excessive taxes. So we could not afford devices.”

Moreover, civil struggle within the neighbouring nations on the Zambian border was intensifying. In contrast to in Zambia, the place independence had been achieved by peaceable means, conflicts in Mozambique, Namibia, and South Africa grew to become violent: as one of many so-called Frontline States – a coalition of nations who opposed South Africa’s apartheid rule and supported black liberation – Zambia grew to become a goal within the crossfire. “They’d bomb some camps in Zambia, the place they suspected that they had freedom fighters camped,” Jagari says.  

President Kaunda’s reply was to declare blackouts and a curfew between 6pm and 6am. It left Zamrock bands with nowhere to play (aside from “teen exhibits” within the afternoon that “no one needed to return to”, as Jagari says) and no technique of earnings. “The curfews and blackout impacted us negatively, as a result of we could not play music at night time. When you needed to play music, you needed to be in a venue from that point till the next morning, which was not sensible, solely machines would try this.” As a replacement, many venues grew to become discotheques, popularising disco and funk music, and shifting Zamrock to the margins.

To compound issues, Zambia suffered a catastrophic Aids disaster that killed an estimated 1.4 million individuals as much as 2023. This included many main figures on the Zamrock scene – amongst them Jagari’s authentic Witch bandmates Chris “Kims” Mbewe, “Giddy King” Mulenga, Paul “Jones” Mumba, John “Music” Muma and “Star MacBoyd” Sinkala. “It was not a really good time,” Jagari says. “And it was not solely the musicians that died that in that point, all throughout the board, troopers died, academics died. The economic system wasn’t too good, we had curfew and blackouts, after which the Aids got here to complete the unhappy story.”

After Jagari left Witch within the late Seventies, they continued with out him as a disco-influenced band underneath the management of keyboardist Patrick Mwondela, who modified the line-up till the band led to 1984. Nevertheless, Zamrock slid into obscurity, a as soon as vibrant expression of freedom all-but forgotten by anybody who wasn’t there. “A 15-year interval the place they’re making all these information, after which hastily they’re all gone.” Egon says. “The cassettes have taken over, identical to they did in different elements of the world, the turntables get thrown out, and the information turn out to be nugatory artefacts that nobody cared about.”

Jagari left music behind at first of the Nineteen Eighties, coaching as a trainer earlier than turning into a born-again Christian within the 90s and going into gemstone mining. “It wasn’t straightforward.” Jagari says. “I attempted to turn out to be a gemstone miner, and the aim was if I struck huge within the gemstone mining, I’d purchase my very own gear and arrange a studio. That was my dream.” 

The course of historical past modified for Jagari, Witch and Zamrock extra extensively when Now-Once more launched We Intend to Trigger Havoc! in 2011. Round 20 years in the past, Egon, who specialises in unearthing and re-issuing forgotten music, was given unmarked cassettes of Zamrock music through pals of pals via his hip hop label Stones Throw Data. Most of it was Witch; Egon then tracked down Jagari. “He had purchased the grasp tapes, then misplaced them. However he had the tapes transferred. After I met him, he was promoting CDRs of Witch’s music on the streets in Lusaka.”

It led to curiosity within the band outdoors of Africa for the primary time. In 2012, Arlotta was despatched the 1975 track Unusual Dream by a buddy. “And I used to be like, what is that this? It was one thing that sounded very acquainted, but in addition utterly completely different, as a result of that they had their very own twist to it. The recording high quality and the way in which it was recorded was completely different. The drummer was loads groovier.” He took a visit to Zambia with some childhood pals in 2014 and determined to trace Jagari all the way down to make a documentary. He discovered Jagari at work in a mine, doing what regarded like laborious labour. “He is an clever man,” Arlotta says. “I feel at first he thought that music was ‘one thing that I used to do’. And there was this battle between being a rock star and being a born-again Christian. Clearly, in church, for those who’re main a band known as Witch, they’re very superstitious about these items down there.”

Each Egon and Arlotta, who managed Witch till January 2025, introduced Jagari out of Africa for occasions and one-off gigs. Arlotta organised Witch’s first tour outdoors Africa in 2017, with a band together with second-era member Patrick Mwondela. Rapturously obtained exhibits throughout the UK, Europe and America led in 2023 to Witch releasing their first album in 39 years, Zango, recorded at Lusaka studio and launched on Desert Daze Sound, in partnership with Partisan Data. Witch’s new album, Sogolo, cements their place as pioneers. “It is pushed plenty of boundaries,” Arlotta says of Sogolo. “It is acquired the roots there, but it surely’s additionally experimenting loads with a extra trendy sound, which is what they had been doing again then.”

In some ways, Jagari is the final man standing: Arlotta calls him “an evangelist” for Zamrock. “There are others simply as essential,” Arlotta. “However he’s actually the one one touring the world.” He’s the artist shaping the legacy of Zamrock. “Legacy is an fascinating query,” Egon says. “As a result of I feel the Zamrock legacy is that nice creativity can come from anyplace, and it could possibly final. The stuff about Zamrock is that there have been artefacts left. And it proves you possibly can be from anyplace. You did not have to have an incredible studio, you did not have to have a significant distribution deal. You did not have to have something. Your music may actually keep within the confines of 1 nation. And you possibly can create one thing so good that a long time later, individuals aren’t simply going out and searching for it, however persons are completely taken by it.”

“I feel the success that Witch is having worldwide,” Arlotta says, “and with issues which are taking place, like Tyler, The Creator, sampling [Ngozi Family] in one among his newest tracks, it is slowly placing Zamrock on the map.”

As for Witch, they’ve reached an viewers all over the world. “With Witch, you can also make a case for them alongside some other nice band, from anyplace,” Egon says. “Anyone who hears their music would not say, ‘That is cool for African rock music.’ They’re identical to, ‘Wow, that is nice.'” 

And now Witch will turn out to be the primary Zamrock band to play at Glastonbury, a massively important second for a style that started 55 years in the past. “It is a good feeling,” Jagari says with a smile. “However there’s this tendency behind my thoughts to suppose how I want that the [rest of the original] band was nonetheless alive, and a few of these bands which had been outstanding that point, in the event that they had been alive, then the world would see what Zambia was doing that point. Sadly, someone has to hold the torch on. And that’s me.  As a result of it is ours. The way in which Rhumba is to Cuba and Congo. The way in which Amapiano is to South Africa. The way in which highlife is to Nigeria. Zamrock is our personal.”

Witch play the Shangri La stage at Glastonbury on 26 June. The Glastonbury Competition takes place from 25 June to 29 June.