A friend recently narrated to me what the MBC Band great, William Malikula, had shared with him. In the 1970s MBC Band was invited to perform in Namibia along with bands from Rhodesia, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia itself.
When they got there and started to practice, they said to each other, “koma sitichitako manyazi kuno? Monga zoona tiziyimba ‘Atsikana akwa Chitedze’ kuno? (are we not going to be humiliated here with our so called traditional hits like ‘Atsikana akwa Chitendze’).” They regretted not having spent time practicing popular Western hits of the time, those by the likes of James Brown or Percy Slage.
MBC Band was scheduled to perform last. They were surprised to see that those that performed before them dished out traditional tunes from their countries. That emboldened them to feature “Atsikana akwa Chitedze”.
As they finally took to the stage, they were overwhelmed by the response from the audience. No sooner had they finished playing the traditional number than the auditorium was inundated with ecstatic shouts of “encore!” making them feel enraptured.
This does not mean that suddenly MBC Band had become super performers. They were simply performing something that was their own. Nobody else in the entire universe would perform Malawian traditional music better. They could try to do it but it would lack one important dimension: authenticity. The audience was mesmerized not necessary because MBC Band were the greatest musicians in the world but rather because they (the audience that is) were hearing something they had not heard before. They may not have performed with the precision of a virtuoso but they performed with authenticity. And there is natural beauty in authenticity, they type of beauty which far surpasses what copying can achieve.
When Dr. Mitchel Strumpf was head of the music department at Chancellor College in the 1980s, he introduced music workshops to this country. Several times a German choir called Camerata Vocalis came to grace the workshops. They would be sent music from Malawi so that they could practice it before they arrived. Everybody was surprised at their rendering of, among other Malawian pieces, Michael Sauka’s “Tambala Walira Kokoliliko”. The voices were angelic and the notes were produced flawlessly, the diction superb. But the group simply did not sound authentic.
The best people to perform Malawian music are Malawians. Often we get tempted into thinking that our music is backward and that we should abandon it and become like foreign performers. We cannot contribute anything to the world if we maintain that kind of attitude. We can produce very good reggae but we will be as authentic as Jamaican artists. We can produce scintillating rock n roll but we will not be like Elvis Presley or Chuck Berry. Malawian choirs can perform intricate classical music by Bach or Handel, Mozart, Beethoven or Haydin but they will not sound as authentic as Western performers, who are an authentic part of that tradition.
One day I spent almost two hours at the Oliver Tambo Airport in Johannesburg. I decided to take time to look for Malawian music in the bookshops but could not get any except that by Wambali Mkandawire. Late Wambali sounds (yes, his voice is as alive in his death as it was in life) authentically Malawian, which is why his music goes far and wide. Psa Mbalame or Chiuta ndi Linga Lithu is a piece I would not expect to get from Jakarta in the Phillipines or from Wellington in Newzealand or indeed from any other place on this planet but from this country or perhaps one of the neighbouring countries. We need to start recognizing the treasure that is uniquely our own. That is the only way we can show the world that we too can contribute to its culture.
South Africans have remained true to their cultural identity despite having many people of Western origin within their borders. One of their greatest music icons, Miriam Makeba, went into exile where she lived for many years but never departed from the South African beat. The Congo too has produced many musicians whose music has been unmistakably Congolese. Some of them have shot to superstardom but their cultural identity has not changed.
We need to search within our culture and invest deliberate effort in showing cultural expression in our music and, generally, in the manner in which we do things. Some of Malawi’s cultural activities may appear mundane but could earn us a good deal of money if we developed them and turned them into tourist attractions. We can have cultural centres where activities like nguli spinning, among others, would be on display, for example.