Sports Extra

Malawi football befriends music

The lyrics can be provoking, irritating and sometimes outright explicit. Every goal has its own anthem. An imminent defeat gets a funeral-like hymn. A comprehensive win, too, has an elaborate tune.

The Flames are roasting Chad at Kamuzu Stadium and this is mid June. Let the football start on the pitch. Let the music flow in the terraces. Better choruses echo outside the VIP after the game. Zamaxeno, zikutipweteka/zamaxeno zikutipweteka(Xenophobia in South Africa hurts us). They sing and dance around the entrance to the dressing room back and forth until everything comes to a stand still.

It is a new composition. No one knows its origin?

True, some Malawians were forced back home from South Africa following xenophobic attacks, but that was two years ago. What is the relevance of the song to the match, when the Flames’ opponent is not even Bafana Bafana of South Africa. Mind boggling.

It is yet another bright Saturday afternoon in July. The air is smelling football. Nothing is defining better Malawi football than a domestic affair between Big Bullets and Mighty Wanderers. Bitter rivals in domestic football.

Heston Munthali, almost from nothing, shoots Bullets ahead. All in red, Bullets fans on the northern terraces erupt into song and dance. This is explicitly, a taunt on Wanderers who pride themselves as unstoppable ants (nyerere).

Nyerere makwera-makwera mudzakwera yakuphwa [you ants, mind what you ride on]. Outright provocative. It is game on.

This TNM Super League game is still in its second-half infancy, when Alfred Manyozo Junior, like a thief, sneaks in an equaliser. Silence engulfs Bullets terraces.

Then comes the inevitable taunt. Time for Wanderers to give Bullets a bitter taste of their own medicine.

Ana ang’onong’ono, kumachita matama (little chaps, big-headed for nothing).

When Wanderers snatch a late winner through Joseph Kamwendo, they find their voices again taunting their former player Henry Kabichi. His surname loosely mean cabbage. Nyerere zadya kabichi/nyerere zadya kabichi (ants have feasted on cabbage).

In the dying minutes of a comprehensive defeat, the supporters switch to songs of tragedy. Ife kudandaula, kulira, kulira, chaka ndi chaka kulira, mawa maliro, lero maliro [death every day, every year, we are mourning].

Welcome to Malawi football music.

Every football match on earth degenerates into a cacophony of song, hand-clapping and dance. Only that Malawi football is treated to new compositions. These create a unique atmosphere at football venues; even more when the venue is the spiritual home of Malawi football, Kamuzu Stadium.

By the time the final whistle blows, you can be certain the fans have, just like their teams on the pitch, comprehensively out-sang each other till their voice gets hoarse.

Wanderers chief supporter Yona Malunga claims credit for composing the nyerere song.

“Ants, like Wanderers, are simply unstoppable. They can sneak through water-tight walls and enter the house of the mighty ones,” said Malunga.

Bullets veteran supporter Raphael Nasimba, too, claimed to have composed songs drawing from folklores.

“My favourite song goes like ‘wasenda nyani chikopa mawa apha munthu (beware, he who skins a monkey alive will next skin a human being)’.

“The message is simple. If Bullets can defeat Wanderers or if the Flames can beat Egypt, then other teams better tread carefully,” explained Nasimba.

Malawi’s top artist Lucius Banda cannot stop admiring the creativity of the football fans. Not even music fans can get closer to the ecstasy that characterises football matches.

“I am tempted to compose a Malawi national football anthem. South Africans have theirs, Shosholoza. Football fans are more lively than a music audience which is sometimes cruel to an artist. It takes a music audience ages to sing along, let alone dance,” says Lucius.

Chancellor College’s music lecturer, Dr. Robert Chanunkha, has a different opinion on why music fans take time to catch the music bug.

“The interest of music fans is not to compose, but entrench themselves in the pleasures brought in by music. This is the reason music fans appear less creative in music composition when you compare them to football fans,” he argues.

The argument on music and football is broad. Lucius argues that in his 20-plus years in music, football came first.

“My Paul [his brother] used to love Bullets back in the 1970s and I, too, fell in love with them. I am supposed to be neutral, though, when it comes to football since I can perform for both of them,” said Lucius who has performed at Bullets fund-raising shows.

If we agree with Lucius, then there is a thin line between music and football.

So does the noise that characterises Malawi football games fit the description of music? Dr. Chanunkha refuses to classify it as such, not in the strictest sense.

“[Football] music belongs to the sub-genre of popular music and is sung for various reasons:  to keep the crowd entertained during the dull stretches of the game; to cheer and encourage their team; to show off to their opposing fans. The music may be sung as songs or chants and may contain humorous lyrics, vocals, or themes of particular teams,” he says.

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