Hey guys my name is Kaano and welcome to my first ever blog post. I am so excited. So in this blog i am going to be talkkng about ZamRock, if you do not know what Zamrock is or maybe its the first time hearing about it let me shade some lighr into that.
ZamRock is a musical genre that first showed up in zambia in the early 1950s. Its is a combination of our african traditional music mixed with sounds or rythmic such as hard rock, garage rock, blues and funk. Some artists also combined our traditional music with acid rock, heavy metal and folk music.
Now you may tend to wonder how and why it first came about in Zambia, well like i first mentioned, it came about in the early 1950s from the copperbelt with singers such as William Mapulanga, Stephen Tsotsi Kasumali, and John Lushi.
Many Zamrock bands and singers such WITCH
, The Peace, Amanaz, Chrissy 'Zebby' Tembo and Paul Ngozi from the band called the Ngozi Family were heavily influenced by overseas bands and artists such as The Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and more.
Now here we are wondering what happened to Zamrock and why we hardly ever hear much about it these days, well.......... Let me tell you why. After Zambia got its independence in 1964, our then President, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda ( may his soul rest in peace) introduced the slogen "One Zambia, One Nation" in order to promote unity, he declared that 90%-95% of music played in radio stations all around Zambia must be of Zambian Origin. Since Western music was and is still popular in Africa, many Zamrock bands and singers were inspired by them thus adopted the similar styles to those playing on American and British TV shows and radios.
An example I would give is paul Ngozi of the Ngozi family band
Who is the creator of the sound "Kalindula", a sound with rhythmic pop music with fuzzy and electric bass guitars.
As the prices of copper and the economy falling down in Zambia, Zambia itself facing political turmoil with it's neighbouring countries, power stations were bombed, and many cities experienced blackouts and curfews that some musicians could not play while others were reduced to playing unstable sets during the day and their ticket prices became unaffordable for most people.
AIDs also played a huge part in bringing Zamrock to an end and by the 1980s, the music had died out.
Well that's all folks. What do you think? Should Zambian rock music come back or should it just stay dead for good?. Anyways thanks for reading this article and hope to see more in the future.
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