Another piece of almost forgotten African music history has been made public by Now Again as an anthology of the first five WITCH-records. As was to be expected, the 4-CD-box (respectively 6-LP-box) does not only stand out on a musical-ethnological level, but more so by its musical quality. With mostly English lyrics, it’s the finest Zamroc that is to be found here: it’s a mixture of soul, funk and jazz, combined with elements of Afrobeat, Congolese rhythms and Folk from Sambia. Even the sound-quality is outstandingly good – which is not a given with recordings from the early seventies – because most of the songs were directly taken from the original tapes. The founder of the label, Eothen Alapatt, gives us an idea about the big (especially financially) investments, the hardship of the travels, the incredible search for literal »survivors« of WITCH through thorough liner-notes, accompanied by a long interview of the WITCH-singer Emmanuel Kangwa »Jagari« Chanda. How difficult it was to get all these master-tapes is simply proven by the fact that back in the day, there lived about as many people in Sambia as in Lagos in Nigeria – and finding Nigerian music from that time in such good quality is difficult enough itself.
Whitefield Brothers
Earthology
Now Again