Takula

"Wow", said Faith, "I seriously didn't know we had this kind of music in Malawi. I was thinking it was only in Mali and Senegal and there that you would find such things". We were sitting in a semi-circle, listening to recordings that no one had been able to hear for the last couple of decades. So little of Malawi’s musical heritage has been available for new generations. Like several other African countries, it was a long time before a recording industry was operative in Malawi. So very little music has been released.

Takula is the eponymous first album from a new band from Malawi and Norway. It contains re-imagined and reinterpreted songs that are drawn from the archives of MBC, the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, the country’s sole recording facility for decades. MBC amassed a huge archive of thousands of pieces of music, a rich heritage of old radio sessions and field recordings. The audio had been conserved on tapes and acetates but the modern incarnation of MBC lacked equipment that would retrieve this vital oral and musical history.

Up stepped veteran Norwegian broadcaster and African music aficionado Sigbjørn Nedland, who knew that Norwegian State broadcaster NRK had vintage tape machines that were gathering dust in places like the country’s largely superfluous Civil Defense radio station, originally built to broadcast to the nation if things went belly up during the early days of the Cold War. Thus in 2014, in a poetic coalition of their different reliquaries, one broadcaster’s antique equipment helped another to unlock and digitize [to date 5000] timeless recordings that were to remain otherwise inaccessible. Sigbjørn’s initiative found a willing co-sponsor for the MBC in the Norwegian Embassy to Malawi in Lilongwe.

So we have ‘Takula’ - songs of pain, renewal and freedom, that look first to the past and then speak to the future. Traditional Malawian harmonies, rhythms and sounds meld beautifully with an articulate and hooky set of pop sign posts that come straight from the North. The deluxe CD edition expands the sense of a band unlocking their history so as to grab and run with of their destiny by bringing you 6 pieces from the MBC archive, each of which can be directly related to a track on the new album.

Takula is a five piece band whose accomplished members come from Malawi and Norway. It comprises Peter Mawanga (Vocals, guitar, percussion), Faith Mussa (Vocals, guitar percussion), Marlyn Chakwera (Vocals, percussion), Samuel Mkandawire (Vocals, bass, guitar, percussion), Georg Buljo (guitars, percussion).