<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=235TpJ_0v1IM11200" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=235TpJ_0v1IM11200" width="960" height="960" ><figcaption>Julia Khoroshilov/Courtesy W.I.T.C.H</figcaption></figure>This is part of Global Sounds, a collection of stories spotlighting the music trends forging connections in 2024.It’s 9:45 p.m. on a Sunday evening, and the packed auditorium of Greenwich Village’s Le Poisson Rouge is filled with the sound of Zamrock. On vocals is 72-year-old Emmanuel Chanda, who goes by the stage name Jagari Chanda, the charismatic, last surviving original member of Witch, once among the most popular bands in Zambia. He’s wearing a matching waistcoat and pants made of chitenge (an African wax print fabric), a yellow T-shirt, a floppy hat, and bracelets featuring the colors of the Zambian flag: red, green, orange, and black. His look is just as striking as his sound.That sound is Zamrock, or Zambian rock, a genre born in the 1970s and inspired by American rock performers such as James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin, and pioneered by bands such as Musi-o-Tunya, Amanaz, 5 Revolutions, and, of course, Witch (the name stands for We Intend to Cause Havoc). It’s a combination of psychedelic rock and traditional Zambian music like kalindula, and performed in a range of Zambian local languages, often with two lead guitars, drums, a bass guitar, and percussion, crescendoing into an up-tempo rhythm.Early hits like “Introduction” (1972) and “In the Past” (1974)—both performed by Chanda the night that I see him—quickly shot Witch to fame. But after the 1980s the band hit pause: The AIDS epidemic claimed the lives of key members, while a crippling economy led many musicians in Zambia to seek alternative employment, including Chanda, who became a teacher and a miner. Plus, the music tastes of the Zambian people evolved after the fall of President Kaunda in 1991, who had a policy that dictated that 95% of music played on Zambian radio stations be made in Zambia.But a decade or so ago, a renewed interest in the band emerged: There was a 2011 vinyl reissue through Now and Again Records; a 2013 documentary by Kabinda Lemba called Rikki and Jagari: The Zamrock Survivors and another in 2021 by Gio Carlotta; and in 2023, Witch finally released a new album titled Zango, featuring a lead single by the same name. Fast-forward to 2024, and if the roar of the crowd at Poisson Rouge is anything to go by, Zamrock is experiencing a revival. “In Zambia they think [music is] a career for failures,” Chanda shouts from the stage. “But in America it’s the other way around.”As a child who grew up listening to my father’s Zamrock records—here in the United States and in Germany and Ethiopia—I was curious to find out whether, over 30 years later, Zamrock was also seeing a similar revival in Zambia. Armed with some music industry contacts, I flew to Lusaka, its capital.My first stop is Radio Cafe studios in Lusaka’s Olympia suburb, a historic neighborhood whose streets are lined with brick homes. It's where some of Zambia’s most popular artists, including Macky 2, Pompi, and Abel Chungu Musuka, have recorded—not to mention Grammy-nominated artist and Zambian rapper Sampa Tembo, better known as Sampa the Great, who recorded her Zamrock-inspired 2002 album, As Above, So Below. I’m there to catch up with her producer Mag 44, or Magnus Mando, who shares that the album was something he and Sampa had been talking about since 2019, prior to her relocating from Australia to Zambia in 2020, which is when the recording process began. “She sent me some Zamrock sounds that she wanted to play with and had a fresh take on the genre,” he says. “She wanted to create a hybrid version, by adding modern hip-hop elements with Zamrock.”“Never Forget,” one of the most popular singles off the album, is an ode to Zamrock and, more specifically, to Chanda who features on another track “Can I Live.” Chanda’s contribution to that song is a series of traditional Zambian chants, an element that, according to Mag 44, gives Zamrock its unique Zambian identity. “There’s also the beat count,” he says. “It’s either a 3/4 or 6/8 in Zamrock, then you add the lead guitar.”Duncan Sodala, the founder of Time Machine Zambia, a vinyl and comics retail company in Mimosa, Lusaka, agrees. “It’s the traditional chants and the lyrics which reference how the artists lived at the time that Zamrock started,” says Sodala, who has worked in the Zambian music industry for over two decades as an artist manager and hip-hop artist. Since founding Time Machine in 2016, he has seen sales of Zamrock records steadily increase. “The Witch albums are the most requested by my clients, followed by Rikki Ililonga and 5 Revolutions,” he says. He likes to use social media as a way to draw in a new generation of listeners. “On Instagram, sometimes I’ll post [about] an original Zamrock album [with the] hashtag #Zamrock. That leads to people asking questions about the genre and how they can access it.”Over at the Zamrock Museum, a project by Modzi Arts (a multidisciplinary production and arts space) in the quiet suburb of Ibex Hill, I meet with Julia Taonga Kaseka, one of the founders. She describes the space as a living museum intended to “resurrect and celebrate Zamrock music,” and shows me a library filled with books about Zambian and other African music, and a record booth packed with Zamrock records, as well as pictures, hats, and other memorabilia. The latter, she tells me, was particularly popular with the 30 women DJs who have been trained through Rackless Kazi—an initiative at the museum that helps 18-to-35-year-old women improve their DJ skills over a five-day residency. Although the main focus of the project expands beyond the museum’s central genre, spanning everything from electronic music to South African house (amapiano), Kaseka is “trying to get them to play more Zamrock.”So far, the museum has hosted 12 residences featuring emerging artists, curators, gallerists, and archivists, as well as documentary screenings, exhibitions, and concerts. Both Chanda and Rikki Ililonga, one of the last surviving original members of Musi-o-Tunya, have acted as mentors throughout, taking up the helm of an outdoor section of the museum called a zango (a traditional meeting spot where communities gather in conversation). “[Chanda and Ililonga] are the Zamrock museum,” says Kaseka. “The elders are the transmission point through memory and music.”<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1rIUhG_0v1IM11200" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1rIUhG_0v1IM11200" width="1067" height="1600" ><figcaption>Courtesy W.I.T.C.H</figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=4YZod6_0v1IM11200" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=4YZod6_0v1IM11200" width="800" height="1200" ><figcaption>Julia Khoroshilov/Courtesy W.I.T.C.H</figcaption></figure>Back in Olympia I meet up with Shadreck Mukenge, who goes by Mumba Yachi, a Congolese-born, Zambia-raised artist whose latest album, Mr Red 8 &amp; The Zamrock Flood, was released this past May, for iced coffee and lemon cake at Taste by Rootz, a café and restaurant where he recently performed. Yachi sees his album as his own contribution to Zamrock. He sings in Lozi, a language you rarely hear in Zamrock because most of its stalwarts were from regions in the country where languages like Bemba and Nyanja are more prominent. Yachi’s packed tour schedule is proof that Zamrock is experiencing a resurgence globally, with dates lined up in the Netherlands, Malawi, and at home in Zambia. “I’m glad Zamrock is getting more recognition in the West,” says Yachi, but points to a recent show in Harare, Zimbabwe, and an upcoming one at Lake of Stars in Malawi as proof that Africans are also embracing the genre.On my last day in Lusaka, I take a walk down Alik Nkhata Road, named after a famous Zambian musician and located in the working-class Kalingalinga neighborhood, on my way to Chilenje House 394, the former home of Kenneth Kaunda, the first president of Zambia and a significant supporter of Zamrock. I pass by Lusaka's ubiquitous red, yellow, and green metal mobile money booths, just like the ones depicted in Sampa’s “Final Form” video from 2019. Through the open doors of bars drift the sounds of gospel music and kalindula, another soulful Zambian genre. And then, right on cue, a burst of Zamrock—a blend of traditional and contemporary sounds honoring Zambia’s past, while embracing its future.</div></body>

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This is part of Global Sounds, a collection of stories spotlighting the music trends forging connections in 2024. It’s 9:45 p.m. on a Sunday evening, and the packed auditorium of Greenwich Village’s Le Poisson Rouge is filled with the sound of Zamrock. On vocals is 72-year-old Emmanuel Chanda, who goes by the stage name Jagari Chanda, the charismatic, last surviving original member of Witch, once among the most popular bands in Zambia. He’s wearing a matching waistcoat and pants made of chitenge (an African wax print fabric), a yellow T-shirt, a floppy hat, and bracelets featuring the colors of the Zambian flag: red, green, orange, and black. His look is just as striking as his sound.

Zambia’s Psychedelic Zamrock Is Having a Second Life

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This is part of Global Sounds, a collection of stories spotlighting the music trends forging connections in 2024. It’s 9:45 p.m. on a Sunday evening, and t

Zambia’s Psychedelic Zamrock Is Having a Second Life

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