The 70s rock band putting ‘Zamrock’ back on the map, 50 years on

Mixing the type of The Rolling Stones with African beats and devices, Zambian group Witch have 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 recognized, 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. Solid in another country’s independence from its British colonisers in 1964, its blossoming got here throughout probably the most important, fascinating and affluent durations in Zambian historical past, and its decline and fall mirrored that of Zambia itself within the late Seventies and early Eighties. A as soon as thriving native music scene grew to become devastated by financial, cultural and well being elements that additionally decimated the broader inhabitants, leaving Zamrock as a relic, unknown exterior 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 recognized, one band has introduced Zamrock to a recent world viewers. Fashioned in 1971, Witch (an acronym for “We Intend to Trigger Havoc”) have been the scene’s greatest and hottest band. Fronted by the charismatic Emmanuel Chanda – higher often called “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 have 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 Information 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 into the topic of Italian film-maker Gio Arlotta’s 2019 documentary, We Intend To Trigger Havoc. “It is exhausting to not be blown away if you hear Witch,” says Now-Once more founder Eothen Alapatt, often called Egon. “The primary two Witch data  [1972’s Introduction and 1974’s In the Past] have this storage, Rolling Stones kind of vibe to them, and people are actually nice. They’re heavy and simply actually uncooked expressions of rock music. However then you definitely 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 must be a breadth of music right here that is price exploring.'”

The Witch revival has unfold far and extensive, resulting in renewed curiosity in Zamrock as an entire. Jack White is a fan, releasing Witch stay music on his Third Man Information label; Beastie Boys’ Mike D, Clairo and Madlib are admirers. Furthermore, rappers Tyler, The Creator, Travis Scott and Yves Tumour have all lately sampled Zamrock bands, extending the style’s sphere of affect to the most important names in cutting-edge hip hop. This week, they launch a brand new album, Sogolo, whereas later this month they are going to turn into the primary Zamrock band to carry out at Glastonbury Festival. “Zamrock is dealing with 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, recognized 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 fully neglect the black neighborhood,” 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 hearken to a radio station in Mozambique that performed the UK prime 40 (typically when his brother was working night time shifts) in addition to jukeboxes in pubs. He was a part of a technology hooked on western acts, who wished 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 title as a result of he reminded buddies of Jagger when performing, though he was initially ambivalent about making the swap. “That bothered me. I do not need to stay in anyone’s shadow. Yeah, he is an important 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 increase that adopted, due to the rise in demand for copper, had a twofold impact: permitting individuals extra disposable revenue 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 larger distinction was President Kenneth Kaunda’s “Zambia first” coverage. As a former musician himself, Kaunda wished 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 must always not at all times be copycats,” Jagari says. “So it opened Pandora’s field, musically. Now everybody had a possibility to go and report in order that they might be heard on the radio.”

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

Zamrock was quickly thriving. “There was the unique ingredient of it being the one scene in Africa that performed such fuzzed-out guitars and have been actually into this heavier facet 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 shall be eaten” – and have been must-see occasions: these marathon reveals may final from 7pm to 2am, and have been so well-liked that there crowds exterior the venues, locked out however clamouring to come back in. The Occasions 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 by means of 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 exhausting employee, on stage he offers it 110% each single time.” “I do not know whether or not we must always name it a secret potential,” Jagari says. “I do not often plan my strikes, I let the music decide what I ought to do.”

Maybe one shocking side of Zamrock was its lack of politics. When you would possibly assume a scene spawned from a selected locale recognized for its historic struggles would possibly carry with it a message, there was – initially no less than – little angst or social commentary. That did change in the direction of the top of the scene – Witch’s 1975 observe 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 believed it was a really rebellious form of music,” Arlotta says. “Once I spoke to the those that lived it, I realised that they’d gained the battle for his or her independence 10 years previous to that. So it was extra of an aesthetic and a vogue that they adopted. There’s lots of the lesser recognized 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 have been free doing no matter we wished.'”

Finally, although, politics grew to become unimaginable to disregard. Like most scenes, Zamrock could not final. However its eventual decline was gradual, devastating, and connected 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 led to a pointy financial decline. “If you need 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 have been considered luxurious. They attracted excessive taxes. So we could not afford devices.”

Moreover, civil warfare within the neighbouring international locations 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 they’d 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 reveals” within the afternoon that “no one wished to come back to”, as Jagari says) and no technique of revenue. “The curfews and blackout impacted us negatively, as a result of we could not play music at night time. When you wished 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 crisis that killed an estimated 1.4 million people up to 2023. This included many main figures on the Zamrock scene – amongst them Jagari’s unique 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, lecturers died. The financial 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 below the management of keyboardist Patrick Mwondela, who modified the line-up till the band resulted in 1984. Nonetheless, 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 data, after which abruptly they’re all gone.” Egon says. “The cassettes have taken over, identical to they did in different components of the world, the turntables get thrown out, and the data turn into nugatory artefacts that nobody cared about.”

Jagari left music behind initially of the Eighties, coaching as a instructor earlier than changing into a born-again Christian within the 90s and going into gemstone mining. “It wasn’t simple.” Jagari says. “I attempted to turn into a gemstone miner, and the aim was if I struck large within the gemstone mining, I might 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 broadly 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 by way of buddies of buddies by means of his hip hop label Stones Throw Information. 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. Once I met him, he was promoting CDRs of Witch’s music on the streets in Lusaka.”

It led to curiosity within the band exterior of Africa for the primary time. In 2012, Arlotta was despatched the 1975 track Unusual Dream by a pal. “And I used to be like, what is that this? It was one thing that sounded very acquainted, but in addition fully completely different, as a result of they’d their very own twist to it. The recording high quality and the best way it was recorded was completely different. The drummer was loads groovier.” He took a visit to Zambia with some childhood buddies in 2014 and determined to trace Jagari right down to make a documentary. He discovered Jagari at work in a mine, doing what seemed like exhausting labour. “He is an clever man,” Arlotta says. “I believe 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 exterior Africa in 2017, with a band together with second-era member Patrick Mwondela. Rapturously obtained reveals 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 Information. 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 have 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 attention-grabbing query,” Egon says. “As a result of I believe the Zamrock legacy is that nice creativity can come from wherever, and it could final. The stuff about Zamrock is that there have been artefacts left. And it proves you can be from wherever. You did not have to have an important studio, you did not have to have a serious distribution deal. You did not have to have something. Your music may actually keep within the confines of 1 nation. And you can create one thing so good that a long time later, individuals aren’t simply going out and searching for it, however individuals are completely taken by it.”

“I believe the success that Witch is having worldwide,” Arlotta says, “and with issues which might be occurring, 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 world wide. “With Witch, you can also make a case for them alongside another nice band, from wherever,” 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 into 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 have been distinguished that point, in the event that they have been alive, then the world would see what Zambia was doing that point. Sadly, anyone 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 Pageant takes place from 25 June to 29 June.