Afro-vibes musician Peter Mawanga, who was in the United States of America (USA) for a month’s music tour, has extended his stay to mix and master his new album.
Mawanga and the Amaravi Movement Band left for the US in April and were expected to return home last month. He held 11 music performances in South Dakota, North Carolina, Montana, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio and West Virginia.
In a brief interview, Mawanga said: “I have wrapped up the tour and now I am mixing my new album.”
He said the album Nyimbo Za Mulungu is his first solo international release to be out later this year.
Mawanga visited the US to promote his two previous albums Pa Phiri Ndi Padambo of 2009 and Mawu a Malawi of 2011. He expects to return home at the end of this month.
“The albums were released locally, but now that I have an international audience, I wanted to promote the albums to that audience as well,” he said.
Mawanga got exposed to the international audience in 2015 when he had an opportunity to launch Mawu a Malawi in the US through an agency, Myriad Artists.
The agency helped him get international recognition as well as expose Malawi’s traditional music.
Mawanga’s music fuses rock outfit of drums-bass-guitar with the traditional sounds of Malawi’s marimba, thumb piano, and percussion.
He calls it afro-vibes, a modern African sound that is intrinsically Malawian.
“The response in the US for Malawian music is so overwhelming because it is new to them. They don’t know tchopa or manganje,” he said.
Mawanga, then known as Peter Pine, came to the limelight in 2002 with the album City Life, which had a controversial hit single Amakhala Ku Blantyre. n
