Witch, Zambia’s resident greatest band ever, has recorded the absolutely joyful album Zango – their first in 39 years! This is for those of us who dearly enjoyed all those world music records on the always interesting Real World Records (thank you, Peter Gabriel!) but still craved the odd wah-wah solo and a rock-solid electric guitar riff from time to time.
Not only that, but Zango will certainly appeal to lovers of the Talking Heads. The first song, “By the Time You Realize,” has a vocal not dissimilar to David Byrne’s off-hand commentary during classics like “Once in a Lifetime,” “Born Under Punches,” and well, anything on the brilliant Remain in Light.
There’s a breezy electric guitar, tough percussion, a melodic keyboard and an infectious chorus sung by Theresa Ng’ambi and Hanna Tembo, who as a duo can’t quite be Bob Marley’s I Threes, but manage to add sublime backing vocals. For the duration of this review, they will be given the affectionate title of the I Twos. Big compliment, there!
“Waile” begins with a thumb piano percussion (worthy of Larks’ Tongues King Crimson!) and then settles into a tough rock groove, which is leavened with an (almost) prayerful interlude, before the tune revs up and pulses quite dramatic rock ‘n’ roll. Of course, the “crisscross rhythms that explode with happiness” of the very great band Osibisa danced with similar grooves.
A little history: Witch (aka We Intend to Cause Havoc) were “dubbed Zambia’s Beatles” (thank you, the press release!) in the ’70s. Now, main guys Emmanuel Jagari Chanda (vocals) and Patrick Mwondela (keyboards and synths) have once again hung out the melodic laundry of music that floats and dances in an always progressive wind. This is, even after all these years, vital music.
The early ’70s, when Witch first recorded, were a time when rock music became transglobal. As a budding Midwest audiophile, I could peruse through the import racks in the Milwaukee Peaches record store (thank you, Mark Krueger!) and find music from England, France, Germany, Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Africa and Italy (to name a few!) – all of which sported really cool covers and usually waved a cultural root note amid the progressive-rock chord complexities.
That said, the joyful vibe continues. “Nshingilile” is pure Zamrock, with roots-rock roots that touch the archetypes of some sort of universal soul. The great band Los Lobos did the very same thing. And ditto for the multi-cultural Swedish band, Kebnekaise.
“Streets of Lusaka” adds a dancehall celebratory reggae vibe to vibrant grooves. Nice! “Unimvweha Shuga” erupts with the spectral pop voices of Theresa Ng’ambi and Hanna Tembo, while the music dips and dives with wormhole dance steps into several parallel universes. Perhaps, the sound is akin to The B-52’s sci-fi rock as glimpsed in a fun house mirror.
And then, as is often said, “the band plays on.” “Avalanche of Love” bounces on helium bed springs as it defies geometry with added vocals from Sampa the Great. “Malango” pulses an electric guitar here and there, with even more of Theresa and Hanna’s I Twos vocals. “Stop the Rot” manages, as Bad Company once suggested, to “rock steady” with the deep electric guitar grooves of JJ Whitefield and Stefan Lilov, the boundless bass of Jacco Gardner, and tight percussion, courtesy of Nico Mauskovic.
“These Eyes of Mine” finds a moment of quietude that drifts with a lap steel guitar, organ solo, acoustic guitar and urgent vocals. It’s a nice juxtaposition to the rest of Zango. The album ends with “Message from W.I.T.C.H.,” an impressionistic swirl of the band’s folk-psych-rock ethos, with a spoken vocal that simply says: “The message is Love.”
Zango — which means “meeting place” – is a lovely and melodic resurrection with a beautiful root note music that prays, thankfully, with the passion of an always generous universal soul.
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