Gerhard Kubik, the German cultural anthropologist

Getting the Malawi music roots

1967. The Blantyre sun has just sunk into the Michiru Hills. As the German cultural anthropologist, who has travelled across Africa studying the deep roots of the African continent, strange music delights his ears somewhere near where Ali Baba Restaurant will stand.

Strange because he knows that music, kwela, is endemic in South Africa or Zimbabwe. And to find three young men, one with the signature pen flute, another with the one string bass and yet another with the rattles entertaining a crowd with their music.

As the song dies, one of the young musicians approaches the German to ask for three pence for the three-man band to play another record. The German tells them he does not have the three pence for a record. He offers to take them to a restaurant where he buys them food.

He wants to understand their musical roots.

September 2013. Meeting the German, Professor Gerhard Kubik, takes you down memory lane of how he discovered the Kachamba brothers Daniel and Donald and their colleague Joseph Bulahamu and introduced them to another platform.

“I was amazed to find them playing kwela music. After we had dinner, I asked them where they were staying and they told me their home was Singano Village in Chileka. That is, 12 kilometres away and they wanted to set forth on foot,” recalls Kubik, who shifts from English to Chichewa in the course of the interview.

Kubik offered to host them at a house he was renting with a Congolese sociologist friend Maurice Djenda at the Blantyre Mission. Here, the three musicians in their 20s, played music and more music.

After performing several times in the country, Kubik introduced the Kachamba Brothers Band to the world, taking them on a trek to Tanzania in 1972 before proceeding to the then East Germany to mark the beginning of tours that would take them to other European countries and the Americas. Apart from playing kwela music, the band had other genres: tsabatsaba, sinjonjo and jazz.

When the Kachamba Brothers Band disbanded in 1974, Donald Kachamba formed the Kachamba’s Kwela Jazz Band, Kubik, together with fellow cultural anthrolopologist Dr Moya Malamusi, joined the band to perform with other members Christopher Gerald and Sinosi Mlendo. After Donald’s death in 2001, the band took up a new name: The Donald Kachamba Kwela Heritage Band.

The band still performs across the world and occasionally in Malawi.

“We want to preserve this heritage. Very soon, we will be going to perform in Europe and America. I always hail Donald who spent some time at the UCLA in America, training students in ethnomusicology. While Daniel was a music genius, Donald was a teacher,” said Kubik.

But how did he found himself in Malawi in the first place?

“I was here on the invitation of the then Malawi president Dr Banda. He wanted us to research on Malawi music. We went the width and breadth of the country studying trends in Malawi music at the time. As a cultural anthropologist, I have always been intrigued by how music shapes societies,” said Kubik.

In those years, he said, Malawi had rich music roots, a core which has been lost over the years. For instance, Malawi had plenty of sansi—mbira like music instruments which were made from iron. Another instrument that was popular, especially among the women was the single-stringed mkangala.

“It is sad today that you scarcely see the sansi which produced music you could identify as coming from Malawi. Women used the mkangala for therapeutic purposes. The problem is that Malawians have a post-colonial hangover since they have been made to believe that everything foreign is modern. Music is the people’s identity,” said Kubik.

According to him, the sansi’s Zimbabwe cousin Mbira has survived the years.

“The Zimbabweans used the Mbira as a symbol of their chimurenga (the Zimbabwe liberation struggle). You can still find the Mbira dze vadzimu all over Zimbabwe. Recently, we were in Mozambique and a similar instrument is also found. In Malawi, it is a different story,” said Kubik.

He said the instrument has put, for instance, Zimbabwe on the world music map. The authentic music of Thomas Mapfumo, the original tunes of Oliver Mtukudzi and the heart-rending mellow songs of Chiwoniso Maraire are unparalleled the world over.

It is not only the sansi and mkangala that face extinction. Instruments like the bangwe as well are vanishing. Yet, he observed, their value in world music is so great.

“They are valuable instruments. The wood and other materials used to make the instruments is found nowhere else in the world. We cry for this loss, as much as we cry at the rate of deforestation,” said Kubik.

That traditional music plays a big part in gaining an international appeal lays bare. Musicians like Salif Keita and Yousou N’dour fuse traditional and modern music instruments to win international acclaim. No, there is no such thing as traditional or modern music in Kubik’s world.

For instance, he said, the mangolongondo can’t be made in Europe.

“The belief that some music is superior is misguided. Whenever I was leaving Germany for Africa, I always told people that I was going to find the roots of jazz. Africa has rich musical elements, some of which diffused into other parts of the world,” says Kubik.

Kubik hails Malamusi for opening the Jacaranda Museum of Ethnographic Objects in Chileka and also recording artists playing Malawian instruments for prosperity’s sake.