Known as the “Zambian Beatles” during their 70s and 80s heyday, WITCH (We Intend To Cause Havoc) released their first album in nearly 40 years on 2nd June 2023 entitled ‘Zango’.
At that time they also shared a new 2023 mini-documentary; ‘Making Of Zango’ which you can watch HERE. The documentary is a follow up to the band’s critically acclaimed 2019 feature length documentary ‘We Intend To Cause Havoc’. In the new film we’re taken behind the scenes of the making of the band’s first album in nearly forty years.
Titled ‘Zango’ after the communal spaces in Zambian villages where people would gather round to share ideas — and later a word that became a synonym with love and unity — the band set up their own “zango” in Lusaka’s legendary DB Studios. Behind-the-scenes footage shows how engineers Jasper Geluk and Michael Linyama managed to revive the dormant DB Studios studio equipment, which had accumulated more than 30 years of dust and rust. The equipment, which included a mixing desk, a tape recorder, and effects that were used on WITCH’s seminal ‘Lazy Bones’ record in 1975, has now brought the classic Zamrock sound to the 21st century, creating the perfect balance that is ‘Zango.’ With cameos from special guests Keith Kabwe, Sampa The Great, and Hanna Tembo & Theresa Ng’ambi, this is: Making of Zango.
The story of Zambia’s greatest rock band WITCH is the story of Zamrock itself. Back in April 2023 they electrified the world with the news that they would be releasing their first record in an extraordinary 39 years.
The most incredible thing about WITCH’s story may well be that they are here to tell it. The WITCH story begins in the ‘60s. As idolisers of British and American rock stars like The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix, Emmanuel ‘Jagari’ Chanda and his friends clung to copies of Melody Maker as the sounds of British radio permeated cities like Lusaka. By the mid’-70s, they were at the centre of an explosive scene performing their own brand of riotous rock-and-roll music infused with percussive African rhythms and a world-is-ours mentality. They called it ‘Zamrock’, and WITCH (We Intend to Cause Havoc, to give them their full name) became infamous for their seven-hour live shows and incendiary on-stage antics.
The press dubbed them “Zambia’s Beatles” as they became renowned by fans all across Africa. But just a few years after their heyday, the band fizzled out. Economic crises, social restrictions, and the AIDS epidemic would spell the end of their first incarnation after lead singer Jagari’s departure in 1977. The band went through a disco-inspired metamorphosis in the ‘80s under the leadership of keyboard savant Patrick Mwondela — but by the mid-decade, that too was in decline. And Zamrock — still an obscurity in the West — was already but a figment of the past.
The revival came in 2011, when Now-Again Records reissued a career-spanning collection of WITCH’s music. It would be the first time their work was widely available outside of the band’s native Zambia — though, sadly, by this point, most of the original line-up had died. Crate-diggers and connoisseurs went wild, inspiring filmmaker and fan Gio Arlotta (today the band’s manager) to journey to the country to find the original band’s last surviving member. Once Zambia’s biggest rock star, Jagari was now a gemstone miner in his late ‘60s.
Gio’s subsequent film, titled ‘WITCH: We Intend To Cause Havoc’, was released in 2019 — it documents the reincarnation of the band with a new line-up ahead of their first-ever live shows in Europe and America. With great acclaim received from international festivals and cinema audiences, and with the new WITCH fulfilling Jagari’s long-harboured dream of performing to fans all over the world, this Zamrock legend finally confirmed its place in rock’s history books.
Empowered and inspired by the rapture at shows in London, Los Angeles and Lusaka — and festivals like SXSW, Desert Daze and Green Man — WITCH veterans Jagari and Patrick, both now in their musical prime in their ‘70s, returned to the studio in 2021 with an international consortium of players from the new live band. They include Dutch multi-instrumentalist and solo artist Jacco Gardner, drummer and fellow Dutchman Nico Mauskoviç (Mauskoviç Dance Band), Bulgarian guitarist Stefan Lilov (L’Eclair), and German guitarist JJ Whitefield (Poets of Rhythm).
Amazingly, the recording was to take place over two weeks at DB Studios — the same studio where the original band’s sensational 1975 album ‘Lazy Bones’ had been made some 46 years prior. “It was almost a kind of unintentional Zamrock museum, with this gigantic archive of vinyl records of all the Zamrock bands,” says Jacco – who also helped produce the new album.
“We were amazed to find all of the original equipment there that was actually used in the ‘70s. One of the local engineers, Michael Linyama, was basically just soldering in the back room the whole time we were there to get all the phaser and fuzz pedals they used in the ‘70s working again. Jasper Geluk, the sound engineer for my solo tours, some WITCH shows, and groups like Altin Gun, Allah-Lahs and L’Eclair, made all the tape machines work – and this complicated analogue process using the original equipment ended up being a big part of the sound.”
‘Zango’ is the first release on new Partisan imprint Desert Daze Sound.The spell of Zamrock has lost no power despite its years of dormancy. As Jagari says himself on the album’s closing track, it’s “like the story of the phoenix, the bird from the ashes. Zamrock has resurrected from its decades-long slumber.”
WITCH have announced not one but two concerts here in Brighton and you can purchase your tickets for the gigs, which are taking place at The Hope & Ruin in Brighton on the evening of Friday 9th August and the afternoon of Saturday 10th August HERE and HERE.
