“Going up that river was like going back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would an island, and butted all day long against the shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off forever from everything you had known once – somewhere – far away in another existence perhaps. There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable attention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect”
Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness
Upon reading the passage above, one could place themselves amidst the words, and imagine with vivid detail a scene to which Conrad describes. A point in space and time that, on one hand, is verdant and full of life in appearance and on the other hostile and devoid of sensation in experience; a paradoxical mix of nature sans any maternal essence, or beauty without any sliver of the divine. Emptiness in the midst of bounty. For each of us that participates in such an imaginative exercise, the memories and feelings that come to mind are undoubtedly unique in their details. Some are transported to the Congo river itself, and see themselves choking in the stagnant, thick air. Others may find themselves on a city street at night, where the dark stillness that swallows them brings no inkling of comfort or tranquility. However the details of our individual representations differ, they are unified in the identity of the experience that we are subject to when traveling to such a mental space. It’s that out-of-place feeling that you get when you return to your hometown to discover that the persona you once used no longer fits, and you are then left to percolate about that which you truly are. And this dichotomy of identity and persona is where I’d like to focus on for the next few paragraphs. Specifically, what is there to be discovered about the identity African music, and how has the persona of imperial colonial rule influenced the development of modern African sounds?
First off, it is worth a few seconds to look at the definitions of some words that’ll be in focus here. Persona, coming from ancient Greece is synonymous with ‘mask’ or ‘character’. In Jungian psychology, the persona is a kind of mask that an individual presents to the world, used equally for leaving impressions on others as well as concealing the true nature of the individual. Identity, coming from Medieval Latin, means ‘the state of being the same’. In broader psychological terms, identity is an individual’s sense of ‘self’ that is not wholly shared with any other person, but partly shared with a group or groups. An individual’s identity, therefore, is not something cut and dry, but rather an intricate and complex structure. And finally the ‘self’, while having many definitions and interpretations, can be thought of most clearly as the “ego”. That which is seen as the command center, organizing the thoughts, feelings, senses, intuitions, and what ever else appears in our experience. For most of us, our “ego” entirely subsumes our self perception, and is responsible for the false notion of power and control we all feel we have from time to time.
Now it is fair to ask at this point “what does any of this have to do with African music and Imperial colonialism?” In truth, not much on the first look. But upon closer scrutiny, I think the history of colonial rule in Africa presents a perfect example of a larger trend that has surfaced elsewhere in the past. That being; we become lost in the personas we adopt and in doing so, our ego gains the license to justify actions that are contrary to humanity itself. With a rampant ego the substantive part of our identity, ie that we are all human, gets pushed aside in preference for personal benefit. Once this barrier is broken, individuality is weaponized and tactfully used in the persecution of others. Social classifications of “savage” and “civilized” have origins in this egoistic mentality. When viewed from a perspective outside the ego however, as Conrad forces us to do in Heart of Darkness, such labels loose their validity and utility. In the colonization of Africa, who were the true “savages?” When we examine the history of the past centuries in Africa, do we find ourselves in a noisy, tumultuous dream? Are the Western powers left to confront a vengeful stillness left in the wake of continental subjugation? Is Western modernity century enveloped by an internal quiet that ever examines our motives and past actions?
If a ‘stillness without peace’ is the fruit of a society with an ego complex, its antithesis would be a sort of ‘vast emptiness vastly filled’ by those in search of a common identity. Herein lies the entrance of music to the scene. To further this point and perhaps make it a bit more concrete, we will look at a genre of music called Zamrock. Unique to Zambia in its origin, this genre of music is both an individual reflection of the history of Imperial rule in Zambia, and a demonstration of colonial influence on the continent itself. And in examining Zamrock, we glimpse once again (as with the Blues) the power of music to connect us with the common identity of humanity. In the thick chocking fog of personal gain and ambition, this ‘sameness’ sinks to the depths. Zamrock serves as a testament to the latent potential of music to rescue us from ourselves when we fail to self separate from the transient societal roles that we play.
“The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart”
Chinua Achebe – “Things Fall Apart”
The history of Zambia and the turbulence of its independence is nested within that of the continent of Africa itself, and therefore cannot be examined separately. While it is true that colonization of Northern Africa dates back to the Greeks and Phoenicians, the lion share occurred within the past 200 years and involved the entirety of the continent. Dominant imperial powers of the age had sent a consistent stream of explorers to Africa in search of resources, much like they had done with the Americas a few generations prior. Encouraged by reports of vast riches of timber, metals and fertile land, countries like Great Britain, France, Portugal, and Belgium claimed rights to large chunks of the continent. Shorty after, they started building general infrastructure for the purposes of resource extraction. As the 19th century deepened however, tensions between European powers increased as Africa’s natural resources began to fuel an increasing portion of western industrialization. The birth of the industrial age progressively increased the value and importance of Africa for Europe’s global influence. The Berlin Agreement of 1885 aimed to resolve these petty squabbles through a unilateral agreement that assigned official colonial rights to the imperial powers and gave them license to divide the continent to their liking. Now this agreement was not truly unilateral because it left out the entirety of African people who had no voice in the conversation. Any semblance of African national sovereignty in the late 19th century (outside of Liberia which maintained itself as a free nation through Neo-Imperialism) was utterly crushed with the Berlin Agreement. What unfolded in the following decades was a shrewd and effective use of ‘white man’s guilt’ to disguise the extraction of resources for imperial use. For centuries, the major imperial powers had drawn on Africa for manpower in the form of slavery without any believable repentance. Yet, at the onset of the ‘scramble for Africa’, religion entered the picture as the ‘civilizing tool’ that the West would graciously bestow as a gift to the people of Africa. First the authors of strive and privation, Europeans now branded themselves as the benevolent force that was to bring salvation to an impoverished continent. Ironically enough, the first Christian missions were actually based in old slave trading forts.
This is not to say definitively that missionaries themselves were complicit in the conspiracy. Many did not believe that their heartfelt contributions were used to veil any economic exploitation. For example, Sir David Livingston, a Scotsman who explored much of South Central Africa including Zambia, adopted the motto “Christianity, Commerce, and Civilization” in his fight to end the slave trade market in Africa. Livingston sought to evangelize African populations along the main rivers of Africa before the impending wave of European commercial interest descended. Without Christianity as a base, Africans, in the eyes of Europeans, would have no dignity and would be seen in Livingston’s opinion as uncivilized. He was so ardent and committed in his quest to help the people of south central Africa appear as equals to Europeans that a city in Zambia is named after him. Yet Livingston’s efforts were futile in the end. Capitalizing on the spread of Christian missionaries throughout the continent, economic interests traveled through these religious channels and went modernizing many African countries. And while the civilizing effect of British built schools and railways and churches was undeniable, the motivations were never in the interests of Africans. With this observation comes our story’s first example of the unhinged ego of an entire culture imposing itself at a continental level. Upon the discovery that Africa could yield more than just man power to Western development, imperial powers succumbed to self ambition and strategically co opted religion as a divisive tool. Legal right for the access to tribal mineral reserves was the true motivation behind colonization, and the persona of ‘proselytizer’ was adopted as a means to achieve such ends. For it was not African people seeking help that motivated European presence on the continent in the first place. If anything, Christianity, economic development, and even the English language itself was imposed across all of Africa without much regard for what Africans thought or wanted. And if nothing else, it is an egotistical act to rationalize the imposition of your values over others for personal gain. With any recognition of a common human identity, the rights and lives of African people would have been respected and seen as equal, even without being evangelized.
An unseen effect of the establishment of imperial infrastructure throughout Africa was a rapid rise in English literacy across the continent. The full consequences of this were felt by all European powers at the end of the second World War when wide spread protests increase. During both World Wars, Africans were drafted into imperial armies despite not having citizenship from the countries for which they served. With the fall of Nazi Germany, the promise given to African colonies, in large part by the allied powers, was greater international respect and self determinism in exchange for their participation. Yet, as usual, these promises were empty and the end of the war brought little change to Africa’s position within the global community. The possibility of denying these promises had disappeared, however, because there was now a base of African intellectuals promoting African nationalism and demanding a change in the balance of power. In a way, colonial education and mission work had come to reap the fruits of its own labor. Centered on the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live and the wish to see self government and African national sovereignty restored, African nationalism sought to create a continent wide identity. Imperial powers were not in a position to forcibly quell social unrest after the damage of two global wars. Therefore, many African colonies were able to negotiate liberation purely though diplomacy. France in particular was not keen on the new idea of African nationalism and employed military force in many of its colonies to chaotic and destabilizing effect. Our case study of Zambia, on the contrary, was a British colony and saw a peaceful transition of power on October 24, 1964. Zambia’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda, was a disciple of the African nationalist movement, and sought to create a Zambian identity that was free of any colonial contamination. Therefore, in what I would consider a stroke of brilliance, Kaunda ordered a radio quota as one of his first legislative acts as president. Regardless of the British Invasion and global surge of American rock and roll, it was deemed that no less than 90% of all music played on Zambian radio had to be of national origin. Consequently, the measure opened up a massive void on the airwaves, and Zambian musicians were blessed with a rare opportunity to experiment with what was essentially a government carte blanche. With some research, this first diplomatic move by Zambian’s first president begins to make more sense. After all, it was anecdotally noted that Kaunda, while pushing for Zambian independence in 1950 “would always be carrying with him a guitar. He would first play his guitar, and then give speeches”. Now the question to be answered by this new African nation was: what exactly is Zambian music?
Like all traditional African music, that of Zambia has no definitive start date or evolutionary sequence for us to follow. What can be said with truth is that syncopated, drum-based music has been an essential component of Zambian culture, with uses spanning from teaching to healing, appealing to spirits and even for mere dance and enjoyment. National identity with this music was tested during the colonial period, specifically with the discovery of copper in northern Zambia (then called Northern Rhodesia) in the final decade of the 19th century. Possessing some of the largest copper deposits in the world, the northern region bordering with the Congo quickly took the name “the Copperbelt”, and served as the primary economic source of the country throughout the 20th century. It was in this region that we can first see the rise of Zamrock’s ancestral influences. Imperial-bankrolled development of mining operations and growing prosperity naturally drew more workers to the region. In the eyes of a musician, this meant the Copperbelt had was the perfect spot to grab an audience, and by the 1940’s a few Zambian and Congolese guitarists established themselves as prominent artists in the region. Traditional, complex finger picking and 6/8 rhythms were fused with native lyrics and languages to great success by artists such as John Lushi, Stephen Tsotsi Kasumali, William Mapulanga, and various others. With the creative substratum set several decades prior by these mining town troubadours, Zambian artists drew on this rich base years later in their effort to create an inclusive yet modern musical identity. However, the astute listener will quickly spot traces of first wave British rock bands such as Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Cream in the Zamrock ethos as well. In fact, Zamrock to me serves as a perfect example of positive cultural appropriation, and a powerful insight into music’s ability to mitigate the damages of ego driven motivation. While Zambians were powerless to rid themselves of colonial influence, even after independence as we will see later, artists of the first generation of a liberated Zambia used material from their oppressors to form an identity that bridges race and culture. I was first hit with this insight upon listening to a song that comes from the thick of the Zamrock era, entitled “Khala my friend”. With a fuzzed out guitar that’ll be familiar to any Brit rock fan mixed with lyrics that are as painful as as they are comforting, this tune in my view is represents both an acceptance and overcoming of struggle. For centuries, Zambians along with all Africans were stereotyped into roles and given rigid personas from which they could not escape. Under this rule, there existed no base in which to anchor, nothing that served definitively as an identity for the people of Africa that didn’t come from Europeans. Yet, Zamrock signifies that first step in establishing something unique and self determined. And even with complete creative freedom, Zambian musicians didn’t flee from their troubled past, but chose to incorporate these historical struggles into their self image.
With the recent and unprecedented liberty from colonial power along with steady economic performance, Zambia entered the 1970’s with optimism on a national scale. One year later, the release of the first commercially produced song only added to the excitement. “Lazy Bones” an LP from the same band, Witch, was also the first album to come from Zambian Music Parlour music label and DB recording studios. Witch (or We Intend To Cause Havoc) would go on to become Zambia’s first true rock and roll band, and is widely regarded these days as the father of Zamrock. Zambian music parlour and DB studios also turned fundamental for the movement, as other bands of the time (Amanaz, Musi-O-Tunya, and Salty Dog) recorded and released dozens of LPs through these channels. Witch front man, Emanuel “Jagari” Chanda, describes the scene when he and his band mates first stared playing shows. “Instruments were hard to come by, [there was] no recording industry to speak of […]and at that time, we had few pennies in our pockets […]but we didn’t care. The only intention we had was to cause havoc with our music”. And cause havoc they did. Drawing inspiration from British and American rock bands of the time, Witch shows usually ended with police, arrests, and a good amount of broken chairs. Chanda himself was arrested more than once, and reflects on such experiences in the song “October Night”. “Seeing nothing but [the] bars of jail…because of music I’m now in chains”. The unique sounds and rich lyrics of Zamrock bands captured the imagination of the country for more than a decade. Although they remained in total obscurity to the rest of the world, bands like Witch contributed immensely both to the Zambian music industry and national identity. Unfortunately, self ambition and the ever reaching arm of colonialism was set to revert all positive progress. For as we will see, it is not so easy to expunge incessant fanaticism from people set on domination and personal gain.
In 1941, President FDR, in a meeting with Winston Churchill, expressed his opinion for imperial colony autonomy by saying “all people have the right to self determinism”. Resonating strongly with the African leftist movement of the time, this ideology structured the framework of African Nationalist thought and the various iterations of it that arose around the continent in the following decades. It was in this same meeting, the Atlantic Conference, that Churchill expressed his contrary opinion of the universal applicability of such policy. And when one looks at the numbers, it becomes clear that maybe Churchill had a point in his contrariety. At the start of the 20th century, the entirety of Africa (with exception of Ethiopia and Liberia) was under European rule. With new found independence coming just a few decades after World War II, mostly all African nations lacked the simple knowledge and intellectual capital to govern themselves. Democratically minded governments with benevolent intentions were tested very quickly by militia men and guerrilla groups thirsty for control. With the cessation of imperial rule came a power vacuum that African nations were not prepared for. Such was the case in Zambia. Although liberated from colonial status, the country operated as a one party republic for nearly 25 years because there simply was not enough legislative knowledge to have a stable and consistent democratic system.
For perspective on the magnitude of chaos that ensued across all of Africa, it is enough to know that within 20 years, there were over 40 successful coups and many failed ones. Part of the power struggle originated locally. After centuries of serving the ego of Europe, it was natural that militia men were eager to impose their wishes on their own people and inherit the persona of tyrant. Examples of African inter-national confrontations and violence in the post-colonial era are as numerous as they are disheartening. In large part, these conflicts came from the problem of developmental inadequacies set forth in the age of European governance. That being: all “progress” made in Africa was for the pure purpose of resource extraction. So much so that in the absence of colonial rule, it could be argued that Africa turned in many ways into a lawless continent. Therefore, soon after officially handing back the keys to the continent to socialist bent, idealist governments enthusiastic to create a continent wide identity, Europe started to use African as a chess board, an arena in which to fight proxy wars and push policies that would continue the old tradition of imperialism under a subversive veil. Or put another was, the same old ambitions with new, equally fraudulent projections of generosity.
Again, this information begs the question: Where does Zamrock fit into this picture? Well, pretty much right at the center of it, because the trajectory of this unique music was ultimately ended by pilfering personalities of both local and international figures. Through sheer bad geographical luck, Zambia was centered at the heart of the African Cold War that lasted more than three decades. Neighboring countries Mozambique, Angola, and Zimbabwe had civil wars lasting more than 15 years that were stared by local forces and then intentionally exacerbated by global powers. Official diplomatic stance of president Kaunda was to support nationalist liberation forces in all of central Africa, and thus through association Zambia was seen as a supporter of the USSR and its socialist ideals. Despite not having any civil war (although there was a failed coup and prolonged general social unrest), Zambian citizens felt the effects of the regional turmoil in collateral violence along the country’s borders and a large immigration of refugees. A combination of these factors led the government to install a national emergency and curfew in the late 1970’s. The once-progressive liberation government turned authoritarian, and that spelled bad news for the Zamrock scene. Rock concerts and a 6 pm government curfew do not mix well, and when threatened with prison, many fans opted out. But perhaps the most devastating blow to Zamrock came in 1974 with the crash of copper prices. British development during the new imperialist era had left Zambia with an exclusively commodity-based economy that was heavily dependent on copper mining and export. As the owner of a commodity economy in a global market, Zambia, like most African nations, was left to abide by the wishes of larger global powers. In essence, colonialism had re-emerged in the form of international economic policy and diplomatic coersion. In retribution for supporting national liberation movements, European powers closed ports of entry and railway lines crucial for exporting copper. At the same time, the USSR increased it copper extraction and undercut global prices with a massive increase in supply. The coupled effects of such policies, added to the aforementioned regional unrest, shrunk the Zambian economy by 30% in just 15 years. And I find it ironic that Zambia had to buoy and re-grow itself with international loans from who else but the old colonial powers. in 2019, Zambia is the owner of massive international loans that were enacted in this exact period of economic downturn.
“We don’t own our lives, And I can’t say that I’m clever, or very careful to be alive today, but God has blessed me with long life. I’m one of the few surviving musicians from the Zamrock era. Most of my friends and colleagues have passed on. The pandemic didn’t spare anybody.”
Emanuel “Jagari” Chanda
As mines shut down, Zamrock was doomed to fold along with them. Mining culture in the Copperbelt was the springboard for Zamrock’s birth, and musical tastes were shifting towards disco at the dawn of the 1980’s even without the economic calamities. But why is it that Zamrock became such an obscure part of musical history, especially when it was centrally tied to a critical era of Zambian history? At the start of the 1980’s, the AIDS crisis started in Africa, and Zambia was one of the countries hardest hit. The first official confirmed case was in 1984, and there was so much confusion about the virus that “at one time [people] thought it was spread through handshakes, second hand clothes, and sharing the same glass of water”. With little knowledge of treatment or prevention, AIDS swept through the country, and spared no one. For an idea of how strong the impact on the musical community, all of the members of the Witch except Jagari died before 2000 from the virus. In fact, he is one of only a few surviving members of all those musicians responsible for creating Zamrock. In this fashion, Zamrock and those who founded it simply disappeared from history as if they were ghosts. Deepening social and economic tensions would put an end to rock concerts but with the death of artists came a permanent and irreversible loss. Despite years of contest and struggle to create an inclusive and unifying national identity, the dawn of the 21st century saw Zambian citizens facing perhaps more crises than at the start of the previous century and with memory loss of the progress they had made.
“You may fetter my leg, but Zeus himself cannot get the better of my free will”
Epictetus
Even the front man of the most famous band in Zambian history was not spared from post colonial misery. After the death of the Zamrock scene and many of his friends, Chanda went on to get a degree in music and teaching, and was a music professor for a few years. After a serving five years in prison for being the scapegoat of a high profile drug bust, the 21 century began for Chanda with little glory of the previous decades. Without much to call his own other than the same old passion for music, Chanda started his own gemstone mining business and traded concert halls for the rugged scenery of the Copperbelt. Opening a music school and recording studio were desires that never left Chanda’s mind, and with a little luck at the mines, this reality always seemed to be around the next corner. Good news eventually showed itself, but in another form. In 2010, Eothen Alpatt of Now-Again Records in Los Angeles started re-issuing and selling some of Witch’s popular vinyls. Within a few short years, the Zamrock forefather himself (then in his early 60’s) was in California playing for an international audience liked he had dreamed of all his life. After a show from that short 2013 tour in San Francisco, Chanda remarked “I had hoped for this much earlier, but that’s the human point of view. God saw it differently. He was grooming me for a challenge”.
“His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and all together bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain – – why he did not instantly disappear”
Joseph Conrad
These days, the Zamrock legacy has gained back some ground that it had lost. Chanda has been touring professionally again with a new band for several years now, and a new generation of Zambians are slowly awakening to their own musical heritage. US record labels have continued to re issue more albums found on the dusty shelves of Zambian Music Parlour and DB Studios, bringing back into the public discourse an extraordinary history and soundtrack that were on the brink of disappearance. As contentious as the country’s post colonial years were, the Zambia of the 21st century has one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. Perhaps now is the era that Zambia will make good on president Kuanda’s nationwide call to “rise and march forward to peace, progress, and human development and dignity.” With the hope of modernity and progress returning to central Africa, and its music gaining an international reach, it seems like a national identity 70 years in the making is back on its development path.
That’s not to say that the future won’t be fraught with adversity. The imperial legacy still lingers, and Zambia remains heavily dependent on copper mining as it always has. Outside of mining, 80% of the working population participates in the informal labor market. Inherent maladies of a commodity economy mean that Zambian public debt is massive, and any slip in the monetary policy could trigger inflation. But this this the reality for Zambia, and for the front man of its greatest rock band that almost vanished from record. Yet, it seems fitting that of all those who entered the crucible of African colonization, it would be a musician to give an archetypal story of how to exit triumphantly. How so? Well, there’s zero doubt that tragedy became an everyday reality for all Africans both during and after imperial rule. The genius of Zamrock was the acceptance and incorporation of this reality into music that was both unique and all-embracing. Any notion of an African identity, whether Zambian or larger scale, wouldn’t be legitimate without broaching the topic of colonial subjugation and imposition. Nor would it hold credibility without reverence to the sheer determination of all Africans to one day free themselves from such shackles. In the same way that British mining companies extracted copper from the Zambian mountains, The ego of imperial powers stripped and mined the human collective of Africa for centuries. Inadvertently, this brought to the surface some gems. And with Zamrock, a true gem is what we encounter. An element that’s born from heat and pressure, that inspires awe without fallacy, and that remains resistant to change of any form. For the identify of precious stones rest in their brilliance, outside of how any one person, or group, or society values or uses them. And in the first moment I heard Zamrock, I knew it was the same.