Musi-O-Tunya - Give Love To Your Children

The legendary Zamrock band’s second album and rare 7” tracks. 1972–1976.
 

Funk, Psych-Rock, and Fuzz-Guitar-lead Afrobeat from Zambia’s groundbreaking band.

 

Finally! The legendary Zamrock band’s second album and two rare 7” tracks. Give Love To Your Children follows Now-Again’s first foray into the Zamrock genre, guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Rikki Ililonga and Musi-O-Tuyna’s Dark Sunrise, which compiled Musi-O-Tunya’s Pathe East Africa 7″ singles, their first album Wings of Africa and Ililonga’s first two solo albums, released under his own name: Zambia and Sunshine Love.

 

Dark Sunrise hadn’t even entered production when we became aware of Musi-O-Tunya’s post-Ililonga trajectory, and its uniqueness in the Zamrock landscape. It is the corollary to Ililonga’s mature solo offerings: Give Love To Your Children is teeming with energy and tension, hazily affected by copious drug use, and recorded quickly, before its members parted ways for good. And now, its often sad story can be told, and its incredible music can be heard, thanks to the participation of Ililonga, Chengala and Barnes, who color the creation and release of Give Love To Your Children in an extensive set of liner notes and interviews included in the album’s booklet. Give Love To Your Children is a marvelous, thrilling, charging beast of a thing that has to be stared at in the face so as to be understood. This album’s grooves hold the last, sustained shouts from one of the first – and greatest – Zamrock ensembles: Musi-O-Tunya exploded at the height of the Zamrock movement with this burst of fuzz guitar, chunky basslines, funk and Zambian folk rhythms, choral chants and compelling lead vocals. They never recorded together again.

soundcolourvibration.com




The legendary Zambian band's compilation captures the energy, excitement and unpredictability of Zamrock at the peak of its 1970s glory.

"Give love to your children / like the sun gives strength to the soil / the moon gives fear to the night / and the stars lead the way for the blind / and the wind gives life to the leaves. / Give love to your children."

These majestic opening lines offer a powerful taste of the holistic, even cosmic, span of Give Love To Your Children by the legendary Zambian band Musi-O-Tunya.

The recently re-released compilation brings together songs recorded between 1972 and 1976, in the heyday of the Zamrock, a psychedelic genre that emerged amidst the economic troubles and social tensions of mid-70s Zambia.

Many people credit Musi-O-Tunya and their renowned front man Rikki Llilonga with creating the flamboyant musical style, but this album was their second after Llilonga left the band. The remaining line-up, however, was still more than enough to spark that Zamrock magic with Wayne Barnes on guitars, band leader Derek Mbao on bass and vocals, Brian Chengala on drums alongside Aliki Kunda and Jasper Lungu on congas, and all backed up by a bold brass section.

 Even with its wide scope, Give Love To Your Children is a collision of worlds. The cover is a sign of this, made up of a cross-section of interwoven colourised photographs, showing the eclectic mien of traditional Zambian music alongside the hip image of 1970s Zamrock.

The unpredictable soundscape of the album similarly juxtaposes a myriad of diverse influences. Musi-O-Tunya were clearly inspired by the rock sounds of 1970s Europe and the US, but this is only a fraction of the psychedelic textures and sounds. Fuzzy, frenzied solos from guitarist Wayne Barnes whip across songs as Derek Mbao's earthy bass restlessly moves the groove forwards and round. Brian Chengala’s percussion meanwhile brilliantly pushes the beat and jams through an entire arc of feeling, building and dropping the intensity while – above all − maintaining a completely danceable afrobeat or kalindula. The brass section too is glorious, triumphantly leading the band at times. Together, as Musi-O-Tunya, the band has sheer groove.

Throughout Give Love To Your Children, Musi-O-Tunya explore a huge number of ideas, whether through the recurring joyful, sprawling guitar solos or the sombre – in meaning, if not in tone − lyrics of ‘Starving Child’ ("Someday everything will be alright / Everything’s going to be alright").
The result is still a consistent, powerful record. So often cover-all statements like ‘great energy’ are readily applied to albums but if there was ever a time to use the cliché, it is here. This is a band intimately in tune with one another and the result is a full-to-bursting sound.

However, that is perhaps where the clichés should end. In fact, to some ears Give Love To Your Children could be unpredictable and it's certainly complex. But this is arguably to its strength, and it is the moments of sheer excess that are most filled with personality and character. The album's lyrics also cover typical Zamrock concerns and darker social and personal issues (the profound ‘My Baby’ for example) but also break with that convention by entering hazy, hallucinogenic territory too.
But this is what is so compelling about Musi-O-Tunya: they are unafraid to experiment with traditional ideas and spoken word. For example, there are whole sections that are free from all traces of ‘modern’ instrumentation. ‘Bashi Mwana’ is in this vein and is perhaps even a welcome break from the fuzz and intensity of the previous tracks. Lyrically, songs are an even balance between English, Bemba and Nyanja. ‘Katonga’ is one of the album’s highlights, opening with a traditional call and answer and accompanying trumpets, only to kick into to a trippy guitar solo and slick afrobeat rhythms before turning again to a bright sung harmony.
You may have trouble keeping up, but this is an album not to be missed.

 thinkafricapress.com

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In the last few years a little-known movement of 70s rock music from the African nation of Zambia has become one of the more satisfying discoveries of the Internet age. Reissues of albums made by groups and singers like Witch, Amanaz, Paul Ngozi, and Chrissy "Zebby" Tembo have exposed this peculiar strain of pysch-flavored rock, known as Zamrock, to new ears. In 2011 the great Now-Again label released Dark Sunrise, a deluxe two-CD package of music by a singer and guitarist named Rikki Ililonga, widely regarded as the driving force behind the movement and the guy who's helped chronicle its history by facilitating the surge of reissues. Now-Again is back with a fantastic reissue of Give Love to Your Children by Musi-O-Tunya, made after Ililonga left his backing behind to go solo. The record displays a broader stylistic range than any of the other Zamrock recordings I've heard, with the wild, post-Hendrix psychedelic guitar solos surrounded, alternately, by deep funk grooves, terse Afrobeat, traditional African percussion music, and R&B balladry. The album's driving, fatback "Give Love to Your Children," with its timeless message of nurturing, is today's 12 O'Clock Track. Check it out after the jump.

Tracklist

1. Give Love To Your Children

2. Sunkha

3. Starving Child

4. Ayeye

5. Njala

6. Katonga

7. When I’m Gone

8. Bashi Mwana

9. My Baby

10. Mwana Osauka

11. Musi-O-Tunya (Bonus)

12. Thunder Man (Bonus)