The ‘cool’, vintage Zambian genre enjoying a rebirth

Artists and music fans from around the world have been rediscovering the 1970s sound of Zambia known as Zamrock in recent years, and now one of the country’s biggest stars is embracing it, hoping to give it a fresh twist.

When devising her third studio album, Sampa the Great looked to the niche, brief musical movement that ignited her birth country more than 50 years ago.

“We were looking for a sound and a voice that was so post-colonial. And Zamrock was that sound – that sound of new freedom, that sound of boldness,” the Zambian-born, Botswanan-raised rapper – who has performed at the likes of Glastonbury, Coachella and the Sydney Opera House – told the BBC.

Zamrock – with its heady blend of psychedelic rock and traditional Zambian sounds – rears its head on Can’t Hold Us, the first single to be released from Sampa’s upcoming album.

Fuzz guitars thrust the song forwards, as 32-year-old Sampa, full name Sampa Tembo, defiantly raps: “They don’t have the guts to match my prowess.”

And she’s not the only contemporary artist who has been digging through Zamrock’s dusty crates. In the past few years US hitmakers Travis Scott, Yves Tumour and Tyler, the Creator have sampled tracks from Ngozi Family, Amanaz and WITCH – all popular bands in Zamrock’s 1970s heyday.

Zamrock can also be heard on our screens – HBO superhero series Watchmen and Emmy-winner Ted Lasso have incorporated songs from the genre in their soundtracks.

It is an unexpected resurgence, especially given that in its heyday, Zamrock never really left the African continent.

The movement emerged in the 1970s, in a Zambia recently broken free from its British colonisers. The nation was basking in an economic boom and President Kenneth Kaunda had enforced a “Zambia first” policy which, among many other things, meant 95% of the music played by radio stations had to be of Zambian origin.

The groundwork was laid for young creatives to forge a bold, distinctly Zambian musical identity.

“We were influenced by rock bands like Deep Purple, Grand Funk Railroad, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown,” says WITCH frontman Emmanuel Chanda, better known as Jagari, after Mick Jagger.

“But we were Africans. We wanted to play like those rock bands but then the African aspect was also calling: ‘You can’t leave me behind’.”

In the 1970s, Zambia’s recording studios were rudimentary and there was no established recording industry. Regardless, Zamrock thrived.

Musicians illuminated stages with bell-bottom jeans, platform shoes and colourful headbands. WITCH, an acronym for We Intend To Cause Havoc, lived up to their name, with fans clamouring outside sold-out venues, hoping to watch marathon shows that sometimes lasted from 19:00 to 02:00.

“The fact that they mixed traditional music with psychedelic rock in a conservative country… and to be able to do that and be loud about it – it was something very bold to do in the 70s, let alone now,” says Sampa – who was pleased to recently discover that her uncle, “Groovy” George Kunda, was a founding member of WITCH.

But for all of its impact, Zamrock could not last. The genre crumbled after roughly a decade, when Zambia was hit with a series of crises. The price of copper, Zambia’s main export, plummeted, leading to an economic decline that diminished the ability to tour, record and buy music.

Musical piracy also hit Zamrockers, as bootleggers made money by copying and selling their music.

And from the 1980s, the country was badly hit by the HIV/Aids crisis, which led to the deaths of many musicians. Five of WITCH’s founding members died from Aids.

Zamrock lay dormant for decades. Its surviving founders returned to civilian life – Jagari went to work in the mines to support his family.

But in the early 2010s, seemingly out of nowhere, record collectors in the West caught on to the genre.

US-based label Now-Again Records played a significant part in Zamrock’s revival, sourcing and reissuing albums from some of the genre’s biggest names.

“I wasn’t sure if it had a market. I was just sure that it was very cool,” Now-Again label boss Eothen “Egon” Alapatt tells the BBC.

“I figured: ‘If I’m curious about this, there’s probably other people who are curious about this’.”

Vinyl enthusiasts rushed to buy original Zamrock records, which only exist in small numbers, and their value naturally spiked.

“I started getting a lot of requests for original Zamrock records, and I didn’t understand why people were so interested,” says Duncan Sodala, a Zamrock fan and the owner of Time Machine, a record store in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka.

Mr Sodala went online and was “shocked” to find that records pressed in the 1970s were selling for between $100 (£74) and $1,000 (£740).

In 2011, Now-Again Records released a compilation of WITCH’s music. The ensuing buzz led to a reincarnation of the band, featuring Jageri and Patrick Mwondela from WITCH’s old days, and a number of younger European musicians.

WITCH have since released two albums, starred in a documentary, played at the iconic Glastonbury Festival and toured outside Africa – something the original band never managed to achieve.

“It’s like a new lease on life I never expected at my advanced age,” 74-year-old Jagari says on a call from New Zealand, the final stop on WITCH’s 2025 world tour.

“In Munich, there was crowd surfing, which I had never done before.”

Though Jagari is thrilled by a second chance to play Zamrock, new opportunities are a reminder of his sorely missed bandmates.

“There are times that I wish the whole band, the original line-up, was there to showcase what it was like in the beginning,” he says.

The crowds at WITCH’s shows, comprising fans young and old, are proof of Zamrock’s fresh appeal.

Other Zamrockers are also being rediscovered – Tyler, the Creator, who sampled the Ngozi Family song 45,000 Volts on his 2024 track Noid, called the band “incredible”.

“The whole country was just doing some, really, really good stuff,” he told popular interviewer Nardwuar.

Go-to hip-hop producer Madlib and Mike D of the Beastie Boys have also voiced admiration for the genre, while Third Man Records, the label co-owned by blues-rocker Jack White, has released a recording of live WITCH music.

Egon believes Zamrock’s surprise popularity is down to its exuberance. He also suggests that the genre was initially boosted by record collectors, as a lot of its songs are in English.

“There was a tremendous bias amongst collectors of rock and roll music from around the world against music in the native language of the country that it was created,” he says.

Sodala, on the other hand, thinks Zamrock’s newer fans are drawn to the music’s “innocence”.

“I think people listen to it and feel how genuine it is,” he says.

Although the record-store owner welcomes Western artists sampling Zamrock, he feels the genre risks being reduced to curated snippets.

“I think this is the reason why an artist like Sampa is very important – because she doesn’t want [Zamrock] to be known just for the samples,” he says.

“I think there is a fear that if we are not loud about Zamrock’s origins, we may be taken out of the equation. The more we think about that, the more we want to be loud about where it comes from.”

Although the likes of hip-hop and R&B enjoy great popularity in Zambia, numerous young artists from the country – like Stasis Prey, Vivo and Sampa the Great collaborator Mag 44 – have also been experimenting with the genre.

Lusaka restaurant Bo’jangles set up an annual Zamrock Festival three years ago and the city’s Modzi Arts institution has established a small museum dedicated to the genre.

Sampa says her upcoming album, which does not yet have a release date, falls into a genre she calls “nu Zamrock”.

Although she has experimented with Zamrock before, this time its rhythms will run through her entire album, mixed with other influences like hip-hop.

“I think Zamrock’s resurgence will be something that is really huge,” she says.

In New Zealand, Jagari is elated that Sampa and her counterparts are running with the genre he helped birth.

“The fire has been lit,” he says. “It’s up to the younger generation to put more firewood to it and let the flames burn.”