Playing via Spotify Playing via YouTube
Skip to YouTube video

Loading player…

Scrobble from Spotify?

Connect your Spotify account to your Last.fm account and scrobble everything you listen to, from any Spotify app on any device or platform.

Connect to Spotify

Dismiss

Wiki

  • Length

    5:15

“Waile” is WITCH’s first original material since 1984, as well as the band’s first release with co-founder and vocalist Emmanuel “Jagari” Chanda since 1977.

Jagari’s lyrics touch on the struggles entwined in the histories of migrants in Zambia, Angola, the Congo and other nearby countries: “there’s a lot of death, sickness, poverty, and misery,” he says. “The song is lamenting that pitiful situation, that’s the Waile — it’s a word in the Lunda and Luvale language.”

“'Waile' was one of the songs that I brought to the WITCH when I joined in 1978,” continues Patrick Mwondela. “While it was played live often back in the day, it was never recorded until the new formation of the band picked it up 43 years later during a rehearsal on an island in Kenya, where the band embraced it and made it their own. A few months after that, they gave it a new lease of life by recording it in Lusaka’s legendary dB Studios (site of the original WITCH 70s recordings). Sang in my native language Luvale, the subject matter is a nostalgic wailing for home of ancient African tribes that would eventually settle in Zambia."

Edit this wiki

Don't want to see ads? Upgrade Now

Similar Tracks

API Calls