One of the things that keeps African music interesting, as a subject to explore, is the number of blind alleys and false doors one finds along the way. Unlike American music, which has been merchandised and glorified such that every piece of ephemera is placed in cannon, African music takes itself a lot less seriously. The result is that, while bigger acts get the lionization of Western music, others seem to just come and go without making a ripple on the Internet that comes later.
For every Fela Kuti or Manu Dibongo, there are dozens of names that appear once on a playlist and if you don’t pay attention, you’ll never find them again. As much as I am coming to appreciate just how limiting and silly Western-style cannonization of music is, its also true that great music gets created, recorded and then lost to time, which feels like a lost opportunity for the rest of us.
One such example is Chrissy Zebby Tembo, a truly brilliant songwriter with the soul of a Brit metal head and the voice of an angel. He has but one album in print, My Ancestors. Incredibly, that singular album doesn’t even feature his most popular song on Spotify, Born Black. Even so, Chrissy’s lyrical talent is the kind of talent that leaves scorch marks on the walls.
I am born black, and I’m poor.
What else wrong have I done?
To people on the wrong side?
I am now a laughing stock.
Man, if those lyrics weren’t written by a black Ozzy Osborne, would else could have? Chrissy’s sense of lyric matches both Ozzy’s fluid, relaxed diction and his Birmingham, blue-color, little guy blues. He’s pissed off, you can’t do anything to make it better, and just fuck everything. What else wrong have I done?
Tembo’s scene is what is called Zamrock by fans these days. It’s a scene that for the most part eschews the AfroPop sound popular in other parts of the continent for fuzzy guitars and heavy vocals like those of Zebby. WITCH, Rikki Ililonga and Ngozi Family are just some of the names that come from that same cauldron of African metal.
But from that cauldron come almost no photographs. No live sets. No stories of concerts past. In fact, CZT’s only photograph that I can find is the one used as my featured image, and it’s just from his album cover. We may be thankful that there are even albums and their covers to find. It all just sort of disappeared after those who were listening moved on.
There’s value in that fact. We do, after all, make paper hats. Music can be heard, appreciated, and sent back into the wave of creative action to which it ultimately belongs. And then someday, if we’re really lucky as musicians, someone will pick it up and love it just as much as anybody ever did. Isn’t that what we really want, as artists? For our art to be appreciated?
Oh, and also getting paid. Getting paid is nice.
So if you’re looking for a truly outstanding musical rabbit hole to go looking down, I can recommend nothing higher than Chrissy Zebby Tembo. Check him out here!