25 October 2023 - 0 Comments

Banished Music and Strange News are losing their minds with excitement to announce that cult Zambian psych-rock superstars WITCH - aka We Intend To Cause Havoc - are touring Aotearoa for the very first time. This is huge news for record collectors, psych-funk heads, and fans of Africa’s rare and radical musical history, some of whom will have waited fifty years for this mighty moment.

Once considered “The Beatles of Zambia”, and the kings of the Zamrock genre they spearheaded, Zambia may not be the first country that springs to mind when thinking of Africa’s rich musical history, but the sound WITCH created in the mid-1970s, fronted by the eternally enigmatic Jagari (named after Mick Jagger, naturally), fused influences ranging from The Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath, to James Brown, as well as their own traditional African rhythms and local songs.

At the height of their fame, WITCH lived up to their name and regularly caused havoc with their seven-hour shows, frontman Jagari’s wild antics, and maniacal fanbase. After some tumultuous decades that saw Zambia endure economic downturn, the AIDS crisis, wrongful arrests, and in recent years resorting to gemstone mining to make a living, sole surviving member Jagari has seen his rock star status restored, with a series of reissues reigniting the world’s interest.

Now, striking while the iron is red hot, Jagari has teamed up with WITCH’s disco-era keyboard player Patrick Mwondela and a collective of incredible musicians from around the world to take this new reincarnation of WITCH back out on the road at long last. Touring in support of their celebrated new album Zango - recorded in the same Zambian studio the band recorded seminal album Lazy Bones - and now the subject of a feature-length documentary film, this phenomenal band’s place in the weird and wild story of rock’n’roll is clearly far from over.

The fuzz and the funk are stronger than ever, the wah wah is alive and well, and WITCH are set to cause their unique and extraordinary hurricane of havoc here in March 2024. Hell yeah!

WITCH
(We Intend To Cause Havoc)

Wednesday 13th March - Hollywood Avondale, Auckland

Thursday 14th March - Meow, Wellington

Banished Music Pre-sale - Friday 27th October, 10AM
General Tickets - Monday 30th October, 10AM

Tickets from www.banishedmusic.com

Photo Credit: Poonah Ghana

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