•CHANDA (left) and Rikki-Ililonga.

By TEDDY DAKA  –
MANY a young man-child would have been chastized by a father: “Leave those guitars alone, son! Music will never feed you. You will forever be poor and a laughing stock. You will father many children from different mothers and your children will roam the streets in rags and beg for food. You will leave no lasting legacy for your illegitimate offspring. And there will be no money to finally put you to rest—a bum!”
This admonition almost proved incontestably true to most Zambian musicians who were brave enough to carry this lonesome burden.
Maybe this prophecy would find fulfillment in no better candidate than the charismatic Witch vocalist and band leader, Emmanuel Kangwa ‘Jaggari’ Chanda, now over six decades old.
My account of this once dynamic figure is not hagiographic, not objectively accurate nor sentimental, but my personal interpretation of events that led Jaggari to ‘donate’ blood, sweat and tears to an unrewarding terrain that is Zambia, ‘The Real Africa’!
The Witch, the first band of its kind to produce a commercial long-play (LP) album in Zambia, was the most talented Zam-rock band in the land, but talent was not reciprocated in riches. For today’s nubile music fan, their fourth album released in 1978 was titled Lukombo Vibes and had a highly vibrant rock piece, Blood Donor, the basis of this discourse.
If we fast forward in time and contrast the rationale of Mark Knopfler’s Dire Straits mocking the western world’s economic set up, “You get your money for nothing and chicks for free”! This after “you play your guitar on the MTV”! Comparatively, that did not work for John Music Muma, Chris Mbewe nor Gideon Mulenga—nor did “playing them drums” pay Boyd Sinkala. Mark Knopfler’s blistered little finger earned his band a fortune and fame.
Fame
Jaggari earned fame without a fortune while his alter ego Mick Jagger can in his old age still afford a beggar’s banquet. In short, hard times assail Jaggari and his ilk! And here the rub begins.
I do not attribute to my father great fortitude for economics and common sense regarding the music business.
His band, The Zig Zag Zex, collapsed in Broken Hill in the late fifties and he finally settled as an average barber on an anthill. But he taught me contentment and pragmatism.
A similar pattern will have emerged in Jaggari as he contemplates what could have been, now at his mine somewhere in Mkushi.
The Rolling Stones, Jaggari’s idols, wailed that they could not find satisfaction but they can still conjure up a beggar’s banquet and harness a private jet.
Muma, Jaggari’s Keith Richards, ended with a K10 plate as his marker on his grave. Chris discovered God and ended his days of poverty praising the Lord in Bostwana. And Boyd, the furious and ever smartly-dressed drummer of Lazy Bones, perished quietly in the backwater that is Kalulushi. Gideon, the bassist in Evil Woman was bused to his native Tanzania by his ailing mother.
There were no obituaries to these souls who packed dance halls and had told girls in mini-skirts and wigs that they looked like “chickens in the kitchen”! The Lukombo Vibes album propelled organist Cosmas Zani to the heights—it was the band’s first organ-flavoured work, the first in Zambia to display untold brilliance on the keys. Cosmas did move on and played with several bands thereafter…
And some self-acclaimed critics shrug their shoulders and whisper, “They were careless.”
Give me a break! The story is longer than that! These remarkable musicians, who could not read music but replicated Carlos Santana like devils deserved worthy donors—sadly Jaggari got only one injection, what a pity!
Victims
I contend that The Witch and Jaggari in particular were victims of the phenomenon that is termed loosely as Third World Politics. As urban as Zambia may have seemed in the seventies, just after ‘independence,’ her economy was still in the middle ages. Proof is with us NOW.
You may already be asking, “What has all this to do with music?” Everything.
Just as the kwacha is pegged to the dollar, Emanyeo Chanda would be compared to Mick Jagger—The Rolling Stones versus The Witch.
The great chasm that stands between these two similar bands is staggering, even unreal—and also unfair (when Mick Jagger heard The Witch, rumour has it, Mick was condescending, dubbing the whole package “amateurish”!). Well, if you compare The Stones’ Gimme Shelter to The Witch’s Lazy Bones, the result is stark—it’s like comparing some of that garbage you get from Hungry Lion to your grandmother’s best dish! Who would disagree with music columnist Elvis Zuma who has argued that The Witch were in fact more talented than The Stones… perhaps location counts!
But there are reasons. It’s important here to delve a little into the historical/economical/psychological factors that came into play; factors that made Jaggari bleed. But this living legend deserves honour and reward (his counterpart has been knighted and Sir Mick Jagger’s offspring will never lack material things) more than Esther Phiri and the like for pioneering contemporary music in Zambia.
Surviving
I would dare add that any identifiable surviving members of the Big Gold Six (vocalist Champion Banda and classical guitarist Bestin Mwanza are no more) deserve a similar honour. They were the unacknowledged historical link, the cross-over from the 1950s music to the 1970s genres.
When Zambia was born in 1964, there were no more than 107 Zambian graduates in the entire nation, and less than 1,000 with full secondary school papers.
One must keep in mind here that the ultimate goal for most anglophile youth was to imitate England and all her glory—the liars are only lying! And the emerging school class drank heavily at the well of the rock monster that bullied its way into every thread of the imagination, virtually forgetting about the river of indigenous musicality.
Our dream (a forgivable mistake!) was a well-paying job, a bungalow, a car in the driveway, a beautiful wife and a couple of concubines for that extra adventure—and of course a fine collection of classic rock played on some pretty expensive equipment. That was the false vision!
Before all this, there was the important pose—a Santana album in your hands, especially Abraxas! Hey, I used to make love to that sleeve! The “black magic woman” on the cover humbled your girl-friend who thought she had a figure to die for! The complete canon of underground and acid rock had to include Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Wishbone Ash, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Eagles, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Fleetwood Mac, The Jefferson Starship, The Grateful Dead, Sweat, Blood and Tears, Pink Floyd (who can forget Darkside of the moon?), The Beatles (you had to have Abbey Road just in case there was a chick who wanted to sound clever!), Bob Dylan (for the original All along the watchtower!), The Cream (The Sunshine Of Your Love—the track every seventies’ Zambian band practiced on!), Carole King ( the Tapestry album – in my opinion, the greatest record by a female artist ever!) and the ultimate album of the time Rejuvenation by The Meters.
The Meters, led by one Allan Toussaint, were the band even the Rolling Stones held in awe (how fittingly that it was a black band—what music! What multi-genre syncopation!).
So, from this came most of the inspiration that culminated in Zam-rock. Come on, you were never going to impress the girls from the convent schools holding The Witch’s Introduction or Living in the Past! Yes, the hammer came down on that.
The few thousands of album-gobbling dudes that Jaggari thrilled were stuck in western mode. Why buy cotton when you can afford silk? An album conceived in Kitwe, hurriedly put together in Nairobi was no match for an album recorded in a twenty-four track studio and which took a year to polish.
Even then, the seventies yielded memorable Zambian albums worth a study: Lukombo Vibes which came with two singles including the hyperkinetic Kangalaitoito, the Ngozi Family’s UK-recorded 99 Per cent Confusion which might well be the best jab Zambia has ever made at vintage rock; Rikki Ililonga’s Sunshine Love, Keith Mhlevu’s Through Fire To Heaven, Mosi-o-Tunya’s Give Your Love To Your Children which is certainly the best world fusion fabric to ever come out of Zambia; and the unforgettable original works of Yandikani Lungu, Emmanuel Mulemena, Lazarus Tembo and others.
Greatest
I argue that The Witch (We Intend To Cause Havoc) were the greatest live band Zambia has ever known. And that Jaggari was the best and most creative performer we were privileged to witness and enjoy. Of course The Witch could not match the Rolling Stones in the studio, but Jaggari could out-match Jagger on stage. Period. The only other artist almost just as electric is Baaba Maal of Senegal.
The Zambian scene is now crawling with impostors overwhelmed by colourless technology that is unleashing bubble gum and toxic waste.
Today’s entertainment writers and radio deejays extol this radioactive noise without the historical perspective and depth that Jamaican-born Mike Tabor brought to his imaginative music broadcasts. Michael Kumwenda’s Burning Youth was the last band who could cruise with The Witch at their peak.
I believe The Last Blood Donor is still bleeding in his bruising pursuit of a pension. Is anybody listening?
For his monumental contribution to Zambian music, let us not allow him to perish alone in his quest for the elusive stone like we did with the best seventies’ bassist Dereck (Ndara Mbao) Moyo, frontman of the Mosi-oa-Tunya, who died forgotten in a Lusaka prison more than 25 years ago. Jaggari was the philosopher’s stone that turned lead into gold.
Whatever powers there be, please honour this vocalist while he is still alive by giving him a decent house, a good 4 x 4 vehicle, and possibly ten million kwacha and let him settle! He bled for the art and left permanent footsteps in the sands and sounds of our time. — Published in the Latest Issue of THIS IS ZAMBIA magazine. — Courtesy of SUMA SYSTEMS