The “cool” vintage Zambian genre is making a comeback

In recent years, artists and music fans around the world have rediscovered Zambia's 1970s sound known as Zamrock, and now one of the country's biggest stars is embracing it in hopes of putting a fresh spin on it.

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

“We were looking for a postcolonial sound and voice, and Zamrock was that sound. A new sound of freedom, a bold sound,” the Zambian-born Botswana-raised rapper, who has performed at Glastonbury, Coachella and the Sydney Opera House, told the BBC.

With a heady blend of psychedelic rock and traditional Zambian sounds, Zamrock emerges with Can't Hold Us, the first single released from Sampa's upcoming album.

Fuzz guitar propels the song forward, and 32-year-old Sampa, real name Sampa Tembo, defiantly raps, “They don't have the guts to match my skill.”

And she's not the only contemporary artist digging through Zamrock's dusty crates. In recent years, US hitmakers Travis Scott, Yves Tumor and Tyler, The Creator have all sampled songs from the Ngozi Family, Amanaz and Witch, popular bands from the heyday of 1970s Zamrock.

Zamrock can also be heard on screen. HBO's superhero series Watchmen and Emmy Award winner Ted Lasso incorporate songs from this genre into their soundtracks.

This is an unexpected comeback, especially considering that Zamrock never really left the African continent during its heyday.

The movement was born in the 1970s in Zambia, which had just been liberated from British colonial rule. The country was experiencing an economic boom, and President Kenneth Kaunda had implemented a “Zambia First'' policy, which meant, among other things, that 95% of the music played on radio stations had to be of Zambian origin.

The foundations were laid for young creators to build a bold and distinct Zambian musical identity.

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

“But we were African. We wanted to play like those rock bands, but the African side was also calling out, 'You can't leave me behind.'”

In the 1970s, recording studios in Zambia were rudimentary and no established recording industry existed. Despite this, Zamrock flourished.

Musicians lit up the stage in bell-bottom jeans, platform shoes, and colorful headbands. “WITCH,” an acronym for “We Intend To Cause Havoc,” lived up to its name as fans clamored outside the packed venue to watch the marathon show, which lasted from 7:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.

“The fact that we mixed traditional music with psychedelic rock in a conservative country…and being able to do it and make a lot of noise was a very bold thing to do in the '70s, let alone now,” Sampa says. Sampa was recently delighted to learn that his uncle “Grooby” ​​George Kunda was a founding member of WITCH.

However, despite its impact, Zamrock did not last long. About a decade later, Zambia suffered a series of crises and the genre collapsed. The price of copper, Zambia's main export, plummeted, leading to an economic decline that reduced the ability to tour, record, and buy music.

Music piracy also hit Themrockers, as pirates made money by copying and selling music.

And starting in the 1980s, the country was hit hard by the HIV/AIDS crisis, which killed many musicians. Five of WITCH's founding members died of AIDS.

Zamrock has been dormant for decades. The surviving founders returned to civilian life, and Jagari began working in the mines to support his family.

But in the early 2010s, out of nowhere, Western record collectors took notice of the genre.

US-based label Now-Again Records played a key role in Zamrock's resurgence, sourcing and reissuing albums from the genre's biggest names.

“We didn't know if there was a market for it. We just knew it was really cool,” Now Again label boss Eosen “Egon” Alapat told the BBC.

“I thought, 'If I'm interested in this, there are probably other people who are interested in this.'”

Record enthusiasts rushed to buy the few original Zamrock records, and their value naturally soared.

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

Sodara looked it up 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 the resurgence of the band, featuring WITCH's old-timers Jageli and Patrick Mwondera, as well as a number of young European musicians.

Since then, WITCH have released two albums, appeared in a documentary, performed at the iconic Glastonbury Festival and toured outside of Africa, something the original band never achieved.

“It's like a new lease on life that I never expected as I get older,” Jagari, 74, said by phone from New Zealand, the final stop on WITCH's 2025 world tour.

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

Jagari is excited about his second chance to play Zamrock, but the new chance reminds him of a missed bandmate.

“Sometimes I wish the whole band, the original lineup, would have been there to show us what it was like in the beginning,” he says.

The young and old fans who gathered at WITCH's shows are proof of Zamrock's fresh appeal.

Other Themrockers have also been rediscovered, with Tyler, The Creator, who sampled Ngozi Family's song “45,000 Volts” on his 2024 song “Noid,” calling the band “incredible.”

“The whole country was doing really, really good things,” he told popular interviewer Nardwal.

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

Egon believes Zamrock's surprising popularity is due to its enthusiasm. He also suggests that the genre was initially encouraged by record collectors, as many of the genre's songs are in English.

“There was a huge prejudice among rock 'n' roll music collectors around the world against music written in the native language of the country where it was made,” he says.

Meanwhile, Sodara believes Zamrock's new fans are drawn to the music's “innocence.”

“I think people hear it and feel how authentic it is,” he says.

Record store owners welcome Western artists to sample Zamrock, but fear the genre is at risk of being reduced to cherry-picked snippets.

“I think this is why artists like Sampa are so important, because she doesn't want[Zamrock]to be known just for samples,” he says.

“I think there's a fear that if we don't talk out loud about the origins of Zamrock, we'll be taken out of the equation. The more we think about it, the more we want to talk out loud about where it came from.”

While hip-hop and R&B are hugely popular in Zambia, a number of the country's young artists are also experimenting with the genre, including Stasis Play, Vivo and Sampa the Great collaborator Mag 44.

Lusaka restaurant Bojangles launched its annual Zamrock Festival three years ago, and the city's Moji Arts Complex has established a small museum dedicated to the genre.

Sampa said her next album, which has no release date yet, will fall into a genre she calls “Nu Zamrock.”

She's experimented with them rock before, but this time the rhythm will run throughout the album, mixed with other influences such as hip-hop.

“I think Zamrock’s comeback is going to be really big,” she says.

In New Zealand, Jagari is overjoyed that Sampa and his friends are working in the genre he created.

“It lit a fire,” he says. “It is the responsibility of the younger generation to put more wood and keep the flames burning.”