Witch (Music Group)

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    Witch, the Zamrock Band, Carries On

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    The group, formed in Zambia, blended psychedelic funk with African influences. At 71, its leader, Jagari Chanda, is putting out his first LP with the band in four decades.During a feverish performance last fall at Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Emmanuel Chanda (who uses the stage name Jagari) paused to preach what he called “the philosophy of positivity.”“When a woman doesn’t love you or when someone does you wrong, it’s all right,” the frontman of the Zambian rock band Witch said, flashing a wide smile. “It’s always all right.”For Chanda, “It’s Alright” — the title of a Witch song from 1974 — isn’t a cheap bromide or a rank cliché. It’s an enduring ballast in a life that has encountered an uncommon number of tragedies and hardships, as well as dreams long deferred.In his 71 years, Chanda has seen his landlocked African country experience waves of political turmoil and economic meltdowns as well as the scourge of AIDS in the ’80s and ’90s, which took the lives of every other original member of Witch. At the same time, he has enjoyed a vaunted reputation at home and with cult audiences abroad as a pioneer of the Zamrock movement that exploded in the 1970s when his country, flush from the spoils of its chief economic source — copper mines — provided young musicians access to European and American music, and created a unique sound.At its root, Zamrock melded fuzz-toned psychedelia, chugging garage rock and roiling funk with a broad mix of African cadences and beats. In its heyday, Witch drew thousands of local fans to its shows, enlivening a scene that included bands like Musi O Tunya (led by the Zamrock mainstay Rikki Ililonga), the Ngozi Family, and Amanaz.Between 1972 and ’77, Chanda recorded five albums with Witch (its name stands for We Intend to Cause Havoc) that initially had no impact outside the Zambia region. That began to change in 2010, when reissues and compilations appeared in Europe and the United States. Fans responded passionately enough to support tours by a fresh band that Chanda assembled six years ago featuring mainly young, European musicians. (The keyboardist Patrick Mwondela played in an incarnation of Witch after Chanda departed in 1979, and is the only other Zambian in the current group.)A recent documentary about the band, titled “We Intend to Cause Havoc,” generated more attention, which has helped Chanda finally fulfill one of his greatest dreams: to record new Witch music. This week the band releases “Zango,” the first album to appear under its name since 1984 and the first in over four decades to feature its frontman.Chanda in the documentary “We Intend to Cause Havoc,” which brought renewed attention to the band.Pantheon Pictures“To me, this is a resurrection,” Chanda said in an interview at a Williamsburg coffee shop the day after the concert. “It’s like I went into oblivion, and then was pushed out to continue what I was created to do.”In the years since Witch first made an impact, younger musicians have been paying attention. Sampa the Great, a 29-year-old Zambian rapper with international reach, said she connected “to the defiance and the edginess” of Witch’s music. “To have traditional music and infuse it with rock, that’s what I do with hip-hop,” she added. She collaborated with Witch on a track from her 2022 album “As Above, So Below” and appears on one of the band’s new songs.Ahmed Gallab, a Sudanese American musician whose group, Sinkane, plays a progressive brand of funk, said that Chanda’s role in Witch “showed me how to be an African rock star to the max.”In some ways, Witch’s new music picks up right where the original band left off. Desert Daze Sound, which signed the group in partnership with Partisan Records, insisted that it record at DB studios in Lusaka, Zambia, where the act cut its most vaunted set, “Lazy Bones,” in 1975.“We have the original gear from those records and the same sound engineer,” said Jacco Gardner, the band’s current bassist, who hails from the Netherlands. But, according to Stefan Lilov, the band’s Switzerland-based guitarist, “some of the equipment was in terrible shape. We had to have a guy solder the guitar pedals together as we were recording.”Despite the vintage touches, it’s the band’s mix of European and African players, as well as its contrast in generations (with all the European members in their 30s and the Zambians decades older), that has infused the new music with fresh rhythmic and melodic flourishes.Onstage in Brooklyn, Chanda easily outpaced his younger bandmates, headbanging, jittering and shaking throughout the night. (His old nickname was Jagger, as in Mick, for his stage moves.) “I didn’t want to be in another man’s shadow,” Chanda said, explaining why he added an “i” to the end of his adopted first name to make it Jagari, which means a brewer of brown sugar in a local language. “I Africanized it!”Bands like the Rolling Stones entranced Chanda from an early age. He first heard their music, as well as that of Grand Funk Railroad and Black Sabbath, on jukeboxes at bars and via radio stations based in Zimbabwe. To young Zambians like Chanda, the bold sound of Stratocasters symbolized the feeling of freedom their country had finally won from Britain in 1964. “Every town had a band or two,” the singer said. “My town had five or six.”Chanda learned guitar from a friend’s brother. In 1971, while in high school, he joined Witch, which mixed Western rock with local kalindula rhythms, helping set off the Zamrock movement. “Not to take anything away from the other great Zambian rock bands, but Witch was on another level,” said Eothen Alapatt, who heads Now-Again Records, a U.S.-based label that reissued its classic work. “Over the course of five records, they showcased tremendous range and development.”Chanda put it simply: “Witch was the band everyone wanted to join.”Witch’s mix of European and African players, as well as its contrast in generations, infused the new music with fresh rhythmic and melodic flourishes.Magdalena Wosinska for The New York TimesBut the Zamrock renaissance was short-lived. By the late ’70s, Zambia’s economy had cratered with tumbling copper prices. Conflicts in neighboring countries spilled over into Zambia, leading the government to declare curfews and blackouts that made concerts rare. “Music became a luxury people couldn’t afford,” Chanda said.Then came AIDS, which decimated large portions of the population. With a new family to support, Chanda quit playing music and began teaching it at Lusaka College. Later, he became a civil servant, but he was fired after being accused of picking up a shipment of drugs at an airport in the mid-90s; the charges were later dropped. To keep his family going, he worked in the mines, and got sober and became religious. Even with the influx of money from touring in recent years, Chanda still digs for gemstones in rough earth to make ends meet. “At this age, it’s hard work for me,” he said, “especially in Africa where it’s hotter.”The chance to tour and create fresh music with new musicians has reinvigorated him. “Jagari wasn’t saying, ‘You have to make the exact Zamrock sound,’” Gardner said. “He said, ‘Make it your own.’”Chanda’s new lyrics, which he delivers in English and several languages local to Zambia, cover both personal and political topics. “Stop the Rot,” sung in Bemba, criticizes those who still practice witchcraft in Zambia. “It’s detrimental to a developing country,” he said. “Message From Witch” features entreaties to halt a host of prejudices, including antisemitism and homophobia — a proclamation that represents a considerable risk in Zambia, where gay sexual activity can draw prison sentences of 15 years or more.Given the escalating demand for Witch to tour — the group completed three jaunts in 2022 — Chanda has big dreams for the future. He hopes to make enough money to afford an excavator to ease the toil of his mining, and he wants to fund a music school back home. He admitted that he sometimes thinks back to his fallen bandmates. “I do wish that group was here,” he said.At the same time, his philosophy of positivity and stalwart faith has inspired him to focus on his new chance. “I’m not here because I’m clever,” he said with his reliable smile. “It’s God. His grace has allowed me to live again.” More

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      Red Hot Chili Peppers Honor Eddie Van Halen, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Margo Price, Jamie xx, the Comet Is Coming and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Red Hot Chili Peppers, ‘Eddie’Red Hot Chili Peppers memorialize Eddie Van Halen and 1980s Los Angeles with what sounds like an old-fashioned, real-time studio jam in “Eddie.” Anthony Kiedis sings biographical snippets — “My brother’s a keeper/I married a TV wife” — while Flea’s bass and John Frusciante’s guitar chase each other all the way through the song, in an ever-changing counterpoint of hopping bass lines and teasing, wailing, shredding, overdriven guitar — the sound of a band in a room, still pushing one another. PARELESKelsea Ballerini, ‘Muscle Memory’In “Muscle Memory,” Kelsea Ballerini orchestrates an instinctive reunion with an old flame — “my body won’t forget our history” — with classic tools: two chords, a backbeat, a lead guitar with wordless caresses. “How long will you be back in town?” she asks, concealing her eagerness. PARELESMargo Price, ‘Change of Heart’Margo Price reaches toward the 1960s and the confrontational side of psychedelia with “Change of Heart.” A wiry blues guitar riff and jabs of organ hint at the Doors as Price delivers a breaking-away song that toys with paradoxes: “You run from danger/straight into trouble,” she sings, adding, “Way down deep you’re as shallow as me.” Just to keep things off- balance, every now and then the band adds an extra beat, while a long, gradual fade-out suggests she’s still a little reluctant to move on. PARELESJamie xx, ‘Kill Dem’It’s now been seven long years since the D.J., producer, and longtime xx member Jamie xx released his beloved solo album “In Colour,” but this year he’s put out two rousing new singles: first the ecstatic “Let’s Do It Again” and now the elastic “Kill Dem.” Built around a sample of the dancehall great Cutty Ranks’ “Limb by Limb,” Jamie minces his source material into barely discernible syllables and launches it into hyperspace, leaving its component parts to ping off one another with a bouncy, exuberant energy. ZOLADZThe Comet Is Coming, ‘Pyramids’The British jazz saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, who lived in Barbados from ages 6 to 16, is at the core of multiple groups with different lineups. In the Comet Is Coming, he works with the synthesizer player Dan Leavers, or Danalogue, and the drummer Maxwell Hallett, a.k.a. Betamax, in a zone where electronic dance music and jazz collide. “Pyramids” is from the trio’s new album, “Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam”; the title of this track might allude to “Pyramid Song” by Radiohead, which shares some of the same ascending yet foreboding chords. Danalogue uses 1980s synthesizers for plump bass tones and upward swoops; Betamax mixes drums and drum machines, constantly accenting different offbeats. And with his meaty tone on tenor saxophone, Hutchings plays a jumpy, dissonant line that’s equally mocking and party-hearty, a bent Carnival shout. PARELESWitch, ‘Waile’In the 1970s, the Zambian rock band Witch — an acronym for We Intend to Cause Havoc — fused garage-rock, psychedelia and funk with African rhythms, spurring a movement called Zamrock. The wider world discovered them with the release of a 2011 collection, and surviving members of the band — the singer Emmanuel (Jagari) Chanda and the keyboardist Patrick Mwondela — returned to the studio in 2021 backed by international musicians, including the Dutch neo-psychedelic songwriter Jacco Gardner. “Waile,” written in 1978 but not previously recorded, addresses “sorrow and suffering” and the separation of a family. It moves through a percolating xylophone-and-guitar riff, blasts of fuzztone, some brisk African funk and, midway through, a slower lament carried by women’s voices before the beat picks up again and hard-nosed guitar riffs push ahead — undaunted. PARELESFlo, ‘Not My Job’On “Not My Job,” the British girl group Flo update the glittering sound of Y2K pop-R&B with a little modern-day therapy-speak: “It’s not my job to make you feel comfortable,” the trio asserts on the chorus. “If you ain’t being vulnerable, that says it all.” The blingy sheen, skittering beat and synthesized strings all conjure an aesthetic you may have not even realized you were nostalgic for — it’s giving “Case of the X”; it’s giving “The Writing’s on the Wall” — albeit enlivened with a fresh, contemporary twist. ZOLADZLil Nas X, ‘Star Walkin’If Lil Nas X continues to play jester, expertly, on social media — this week, he posted impishly hilarious videos of himself sending pizzas to protesters outside of one of his concerts, and of his newly minted wax figure FaceTiming his confused friends — his new single “Star Walkin’” suggests that he is still interested in using his music as an outlet for feelings that complicate that persona, like anxiety, light melancholy and self-doubt. “They said I wouldn’t make it out alive,” he sings defiantly on this gleaming, synth-driven track, which serves as the theme song for this year’s League of Legends World Championship. The one-off certainly doesn’t rank among his most memorable singles, but it’s further proof that he’s figured out a reliable sonic formula to turn personal apprehension into steely braggadocio; by the end of the song, he asks, “Why worship legends when you know that you can join them?” ZOLADZEmiliana Torrini & the Colorist Orchestra, ‘Right Here’Emiliana Torrini attests to the reassurance of a lasting relationship in “Right Here”: “Here’s to all the roads that we’ve been down,” she sings with a smile. “I’m right here by your side.” She’s backed by the Colorist Orchestra, a happily quirky Belgian chamber-pop ensemble that mixes standard instruments with homemade ones — including, for this song, the sound of stone scraping stone. Torrini and the Colorist Orchestra rearranged some of her older songs on an album they shared in 2018, while “Right Here” previews an LP of new collaborations due early next year. There’s pointillistic syncopation from marimba, glockenspiel and pizzicato strings, with a backdrop of sustained chords: the ticktock of everyday minutiae held together by the promise of constancy. PARELESShannen Moser, ‘Oh My God’Shannen Moser recreates a community sing and a hometown band concert in “Oh My God,” from an album arriving next week. In “The Sun Still Seems to Move,” Moser offers theological and existential musings — “I know that life’s not one linear seamless destination” — over fingerpicking and woodwinds, muscles and hands and breath. The music is thoughtful but determinedly physical. PARELESAnna B Savage, ‘The Ghost’The London-based artist Anna B Savage’s devastating new single, “The Ghost,” derives its power from a gradual accumulation of small, intimate details. “We used to notice the same things: His toenails, that little bug,” she sings to an old flame in a trembling low register. “But that changed, you couldn’t see the grave we dug.” Long after the breakup, though, the memory of her ex still lingers. “Stop haunting me, please,” she begs on the chorus, as the austere, piano-driven arrangement suddenly fills up with an eerie atmosphere. It sounds like an exorcism — or at least a yearning, last-ditch attempt at one, in desperate hope that it works. ZOLADZ More