Zamrock Legends WITCH: LIVE! at Le Poisson Rouge, NYC

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Was back in NYC last week which meant I was back at my favorite live music venue – Le Poisson Rouge (LPR) on Bleecker Street. This time, to see a band I had developed a curiosity for upon seeing their name listed on LPR’s website – Zamrock pioneers WITCH.

WITCH, or W.I.T.C.H. (a backronym for “We Intend To Cause Havoc”) are widely regarded as the most popular Zambian band of the 1970s and pioneers of the Zamrock movement that exploded in the 1970s in Zambia, mostly due to a boom in copper mining that led to Zambia having one of the largest economies in Africa.

71 year old(!) Emanuel “Jagari” Chanda of WITCH

In 1964, Zambia became independent from the United Kingdom and Kenneth Kaunda came to power as the first president. Kaunda would issue a decree that 95% of music on Zambian radio must be of Zambian origin. This fueled the blazing Zamrock movement.

Blending African rhythms with psychedelia, garage rock and funk, WITCH were dubbed their country’s own Beatles and were renowned for incendiary, seven-hour live shows led by their dynamic lead vocalist Emanuel Chanda, known as “Jagari” after Mick Jagger.

Dynamic backup singing duo of Hannah Tembo (L) and Theresa Ng’ambi

The band’s debut album, “Introduction”, blasted into national consciousness in 1972 and made history as the first commercial Zamrock record. Jagari and WITCH recorded five trailblazing albums across the ‘70s (more than any other Zamrock band in history). WITCH were rockstars.

“We grew to be very famous,” Jagari stated in a recent interview with SPIN Magazine. “Not to blow my own trumpet, but people couldn’t compete. We drew big crowds, in the thousands, because we played good music, the frontman was full of antics and we had style like no one else!”

Zambia, however, plunged into an economic crisis in the mid-70s as the price of copper – which accounted for 95% of the country’s export earnings – halved in value on the world market. The emergence of disco during that same time and the scourge of AIDS in the ’80s and ’90s (which killed about 13% of the Zambian adult population in just six years), is believed to have claimed the lives of every other original member of WITCH.

By the end of the 80s, WITCH, along with the Zamrock movement, tumbled into obscurity [*]. This prompted Jagari to leave the band and pursue his career as a teacher and head of music at a secondary school. In the years that followed, he became a gemstone miner in the Zambian countryside.

Stefan Lilov [guitar]

In 2011, Now-Again Records reissued a career-spanning collection of WITCH’s music and crate-diggers and music heads worldwide went wild. Including filmmaker and fan Gio Arlotta (WITCH’s current manager) who embarked on a cross-continental trip to track down Jagari and film a Zambian “Searching for Sugarman” style documentary and get the band back together.

Following the release of Arlotta’s critically lauded 2019 documentary, “WITCH: We Intend To Cause Havoc“, a cult following of fans formed. Jagari assembled a new band featuring mainly young, European musicians. WITCH would secure festival slots at Desert Daze, SXSW and Green Man. The band’s newfound popularity helped Jagari finally fulfill a dream that had lay dormant since the 80s – record new WITCH music.

Joe Lyle [drums] and Michael Rault [guitar]

Desert Daze Sound (the label that the band is now signed in partnership with Partisan Records) not only united the band back into the studio [*], they insisted that WITCH return to DB Studios in Zambia to record 2023’s “Zango” with the original ‘70s gear Jagari used for WITCH’s 1975 album “Lazy Bones!!” including the same sound engineer to achieve the raw analog scratch of their most celebrated album. They even had a guy solder the guitar pedals (used 48 years ago) as they were recording.

“To me, this is a resurrection,” Jagari said in an interview with the New York Times. “It’s like I went into oblivion, and then was pushed out to continue what I was created to do.”

“Back in the day WITCH represented ‘We Intend to Cause Havoc’,” said long-time (80s) keyboardist Patrick Mwondela. “This time around, we are the same band but we have a different message, and that is that “We Intend to Cause Harmony, Healing and bring Hope.”

They did all that, plus a little havoc, in what was one of the most dynamic live shows I’ve ever witnessed at Le Poisson Rouge. Alas, it was the last stop of their current tour. Don’t miss them should they be coming to a city near you.

Enjoy the photographs…