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Various Zambian artists
Zambian Roadside (Sharp Wood)
$17.99
Zambia's Southern Province is vibrant with a large diversity of music - topical songs, unique guitar styles (often with self-made guitars), catchy tunes and rhythms, beautiful harmony singing, and interesting percussion. Field recorder Michael Baird calls it 'the roadside reality - the state of music as it is.'
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Listen:
Moyo taukali macumba (guitar band)
Busiki bwanduuma (guitar band)
Wbelelwa (mbira, balafon, voices)
Shungu Namutitima (women's vocal ensemble)
See also: Guitar music of Congo and Zambia (HughTracey recordings, 1950-57)
| "Straight off the street - in fact, the main highway running north from Livingston in Zambia's Southern Province - comes busy, vivid music, a sort of turbocharged skiffle, sometimes based on Zambia's best-known kalindula rhythms. It's infectious, urgent, with sweet harmony singing and lyrics which mix broad comedy with social comment, sometimes real tragedy. For example, the difficulty of keeping your knickers up when your body is wasted by AIDS. Percussion might be a nail clinked on a glass bottle, or maybe a drum kit, bass drum fashioned from an oil drum, snare from five-litre plastic fruit juice containers, toms from plastic tubing, cymbal a metal ring with attached bottle tops to act as resonators. Now there's a lot to be said for a new Stratocaster, but few will get as much expression from their gleaming Fender as the bands here conjure from home-made bass, ukulele and four-string guitars." - Rick Sanders, fRoots |
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Please note!
Most CDs have been
imported from Europe or Asia.
They are not all
shrink-wrapped, and I am not
going to con you by wrapping them
here just to make you think they
have been sterilized in America.
We guarantee that the CDs and the
contents are all brand new and in
perfect condition. Whenever I
can, I use recycled shipping
materials. They may not look as
pretty on the outside, but they save
money and keep the trash dumps a
little bit emptier.
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