text by Brendan Casey
photos by Johnny Galvan
It was a fun experiment to walk around and eavesdrop which bands people were most excited to see at Desert Daze. Of course, heavy hitters like Wu-Tang or Ween or Flaming Lips were common choices but things started to split based on personal preference as you got more genre specific. One person’s wide-eyed “I can’t believe that _______ is playing” might elicit an unknowing shrug from their buddy. But one name that seemed to land on everyone’s list was the Zambian band W.I.T.C.H. (or We Intend To Cause Havoc).
The band’s records are Holy Grail masterpieces to fans of the 70s African Psych canon, with the music matched only by the equally incredible story of the band. The frontman Emmanuel “Jagari” Chanda, got his stage name from a certain British chap named Jagger who had been making waves for his own flashy show stopping performances. Adding an ‘i’ to Africanize the name, he looked it up to see if the word held a meaning in his native tongue. It meant the sugar that is cooked dark brown on the bottom of sweets. It also meant a Witch was born.
W.I.T.C.H. became a massive force in Zambian and the surrounding countries. Adding their own Zambian twist on all the imported records of Deep Purple, Richie Blackmore etc, they were soon playing stadiums and regularly on TV. However, fate stepped in and things took a turn. Repressive governments cracked down on live music at night, a majority of the band died from AIDS in the 80s and 90s, Jagari became a born again Christian and started working in a gemstone mine. Fate still wasn’t done though. The albums were reissued by Now-Again Records in 2012 and created a massive buzz among record heads. Italian director Gio Arlotta and Dutch psych musician Jacco Gardner came with a crew to Zambia to film a documentary on Jagari. Requests for shows started popping up and the W.I.T.C.H. was revived.
Desert Daze held a screening of Arlotta’s fantastic documentary “We Intend To Cause Havoc.” D.C. Punk icon Ian Svenonious was visibly enthralled as he led the Q&A afterwards. Later on, we sat down with Jagari to chat about the recording process, watching the Good the Bad and the Ugly in Zambia and the best way to squeeze out a bit more money from oil companies.
Brendan: First things first, the last time you were in the states was just two shows in California. This is the first time otherwise?
Jagari: First time was at Urban Outfitters in Los Angeles and then another one in San Francisco, there were two shows in 2013.
B: Did you think that was going to continue till up to now, playing festivals and getting to have this documentary?
J: Sometimes you have this hope but you don’t know how it will turn out. I can’t say I had hoped to have something like what’s going on now.
B: It is pretty amazing, I think the music is really great but the story of the whole thing is so wonderful. So when you did the first WITCH album that was the “first” Zambian album, right?
J: The first commercial album of the Zamrock label. There were other albums in different genres, but they were not commercial albums, things like The Big Gold Six and such but they were mainly for the radio.
B: And when you guys were recording that album, what did the engineer think, was he like this is great or thinking what are these guys doing?
J: Well fortunately, the engineer of the studio was a musician. He was a folk musician and he was employed by the mines to mind that studio which was a subsidiary of the mine.
B: What was the process like to get it recorded since you’re the first ones doing it? You had to be figuring it out as you went along?
J: We had no idea what goes on in the studio, we just plugged in and played like a gig and then it was recorded and if there was a mistake by someone we had to start out fresh
B: And from when it’s recorded to getting pressed on the vinyl that must have also been a whole new journey for you guys.
J: We didn’t have a processing plant at that time so what used to happen at fIrst when we recorded “Introduction,” our manager that sponsored the recording took me with him to Kenya. That’s where we pressed the stamp, in Nairobi at Sapra studios… no no, I don’t know the name of the company that was making vinyls but we recorded at Sapra studios later. And then I would go back with the vinyl and take the stamp back to Zambia and when we needed to print some more I started flying alone now because I had familiarized myself with the process and the route to that place.
B: Vinyl is heavy stuff if you’re trying to move a lot across country.
J: Yes, but sometimes we only carried 300/400 copies at a time.
B: So you were still mining back then even when WITCH was starting out?
J: No no, I grew up in a mining town. My older brother, who was my guardian, was a miner working for the mines at that time. Not as a miner for gemstones, that came much later when people were allowed to own mines.
B: And when you guys were first playing shows what was that barbecues? Venues? Clubs?
J: They were community halls most of the time. But you also had the open air spaces, like this, but not a festival per sé. It was like international trade fair days and companies had slots in there and they had bands, so we usually played for this company or that company or the refined oil products company and usually they fought to get the WITCH first. Initially they would pay us very little until we found a trick to get something from them. If one came first we would tell them, “Oh you’re late! Your friends were here and they offered so much” and then they would say ‘Did you sign the contract?!’ and we would say ‘We are signing tomorrow.’ ‘Don’t sign! We’ll pay you more!’ (everyone’s laughing) and that’s how we managed to squeeze something more out from them. We also had festivals but they were not common festivals, they were not like an annual event, just once in a while.
B: Did you go to Angola or Congo since those were nearby?
J: Botswana, Zimbabwe, Malawi
B: Was it difficult to tour then?
J: Promoters came from there and took us with them, we didn’t go on our own. But sometimes after the arranged time some other promoters would come aboard and cause us to stay longer than what we had planned initially
B: And you were mentioning in Lusaka there was a spot called the Astra ?
J: The Astra was in Kitwe. It was the cinema hall but there was a cinema theater and then Annex Street was a bar and so it was where most miners spent their time when they got paid. This is why I would hang around there, they were loose with their money when they got paid. And it’s like a common thing in that community, everyone’s a miner so they got paid at the same time and their behavior was the same.
B: Was it mostly American films they had coming through the Astra?
J: Cowboys. “The Good The Bad and the Ugly,” and such and cartoons. The arrangement was you go in and watch cartoons, then there was an intermission, you go out and buy snacks like popcorns and things, and then get back for the main show.
B: And those were popular? All the westerns?
J: They were very popular.
B: Did people dress like that too? Did they want to get the cowboy hats and everything or just watch the films themselves?
J: The people that were older than us could do that but we were young so….(everyone laughs as he trails off) But you know at one time they didn’t allow people without shoes into the cinema so what we used to do is, the two of us, if we had four of us, the two would borrow shoes and then one would go and carry them back and pretend to go and buy something and sneak everyone in. Meanwhile the other guy remains inside the theatre without shoes. (everyone’s cracking up)
B: I can just see him in the dark, his toes wiggling thinking “Come back soon guys, everything good, right?”
J: And at the end of the show, make sure no one was checking! So we would rush out!
B: So I was gonna say too, the name Jagari is based on Mick Jagger. I was born in the 80s, so I’ve been able to easily see clips of him online. For you, you could hear those records and see those photos but you couldn’t easily get footage of Mick Jagger. Were you even able to see what him performing looked like?
J: Later we started seeing it, but there were not many things. Maybe in Melody Maker magazine, things like that, you see some pictures, you see somebody’s stance, you see deeper things, you’re trying to imagine, “This can’t be the only stance. There must be something else he was doing!” Things like that, most of it was left to the imagination.
B: That’s what I think is so interesting about it. You were doing “Mick Jagger” but it’s also more how you imagined Mick Jagger.
J: Yeah yeah, but you see, if someone is singing things like ‘Jumpin Jack Flash’, ‘Sympathy For the Devil,’ such songs didn’t demand someone being like a statue, you understand, so you’re imagining, he’s a frontman, he must interpret what the band is doing and as a frontman you’re making things easier for those that don’t know the music and that was his role. So then me as a frontman for the band, I was just thinking, ‘Why are they talking so much about this person? He must be very special.’ And when we were under contract with Teal Records, we were getting records free, that was part of the contract. Then you go listen to Deep Purple, you listen to Richie Blackmore and just think man, ‘How much time does he dedicate to acquiring this skill?
B: How hard was it to get those records? On one hand, it’s a British colony so I’m sure there’s British music coming in.
J: It was a British territory and all the influences… most of the influences came from UK .
B: So was it easy to get those records if you wanted then?
J: Yeah yeah, later there was a place called Piano House and there was a company that came in from Polygram to Teal Record company, so it made things easier. Now the records were being printed within Zambia. Pianos was one of the distributing points, so under Teal Record company they would press the music. We were 60 km north of that place and then we would just go and say we are under Teal. They knew and then every latest we would get. Something to just listen to but most of the time whenever we got something of interest, we learnt as a cover for the band. You can imagine that we needed a lot of music. We needed a big repertoire because we didn’t play sets of one hour, 45 minutes. We played sets of four or five hours. But at the back of all our minds we all wanted to play music abroad somehow. We believed that the Western World was a better opportunity and that in our own imagination two or three of our songs from our recordings would be hits and then we would be millionaires! But it was not…(trails off chuckling)
B: Well, we’ll see what happens this time around.
J: This is just the beginning. I would not be surprised now. It’s like those fires we saw in California, I’m sure it starts small and it goes with the wind. So the more festivals and shows we play, the more people will know about this music.
B: Did you ever see the Rolling Stones Live
J: No, but I missed a chance. They came to South Africa and I was in South Africa at the time. Someone wanted us to do new versions of our music. This guy said ‘I’m going to pay for a recording, go and redo some versions of the music’, and we went to South Africa but the festivals of this nature were not common at that time, by ten o’clock I think the whole stadium was filled up and we were on the other side of Johannesburg it was in Ellisburg we missed it. We just watched on TV the arrival and you know later on anyway my inclination was not towards Rolling Stones. It was towards Deep Purple and Grand Funk, the heavier parts.
The band now consists of original member Patrick Mwondela and then various other European psych players including Jacco Gardner. Their set is magnificent. Tight, groovy and with an impressively energetic (and close to 70) Jagari in a near trance shaking to the beat, doing push ups and belting out his WITCH’s spell. Jagari himself may have never gotten to see Mick Jagger in person, but after Desert Daze many music fans will boast of the time they got to witness Jagari and the W.I.T.C.H. up close.
