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Gaspar Nali from Malawi

This seems to be doing the rounds even though originally uploaded 5 years ago via a VK Russian re-upload, it’s Gaspar Nali from Nkhata Bay in Malawi playing his ‘babatone’ self-made instrument and singing in a dialect of Chichewa a song apparently called ‘Abale Ndikum Gem’ (thank you Google Translate). If African music has a metal headbanging equivalent, this is it. Lyrics are pretty critical of the state of the nation too apparently.(via DJ Not-I)

I dug around and you can see more of Gasper on an interesting documentary about the music of Malawi called Deep Roots. It reminds me of the Congo’s Konono #1, whose founder sadly died recently, the self-made instruments made out of necessity, but they give the music a completely unique sound. I’m sure they’d prefer Western instruments, real guitars etc. but this sounds much more original and has the local flavour of Malawi in it’s roots:

EDIT: As you can see from the comments, Secousse have posted their mix of the track from a few years ago for a free download, as you can’t download this anywhere.

I hope Gaspar does hear about this, and benefits from this viral exposure since Malawi is officially now the poorest country in the world, I doubt many people have bank accounts let alone PayPal, Bandcamp or much internet/phone access at all.

Comments

6 responses to “Gaspar Nali from Malawi”

  1. JUAN VILLAVICENCIO avatar

    Nice song.
    I would like to play it with other instruments.
    Is it possible to have the lyrics and maybe a translation?

    Hugs

    Juan Carlos

    1. Tim B avatar

      It’s not mine and I don’t speak Chichewa…you can find a translation to English in the YouTube comments or on Reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/368q2j/african_disco/ – it’s not exactly what you might expect!

      Otherwise try messaging him via his Myspace? https://myspace.com/gaspernali Don’t know how connected he is out in Malawi, it’s the world’s poorest country: https://web.archive.org/web/20160304095914/http://www.nyasatimes.com/2015/02/17/malawi-now-ranked-poorest-in-the-world-president-talks-of-desperate-need-for-aid/

    1. Tim B avatar

      Thanks!

  2. Kate avatar

    Hi guys, we have some news on Gasper. We are living in Gasper’s home town, Nkhata Bay and are running a music studio project here. Gasper has been in to the studio in the last few weeks to record this song with professional equipment & production. According to Gasper himself, the song title is actually ‘A Bale Ndikuwuzeni’. We’ve just released it for him on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon etc etc in the hope that he can get some benefit from all the exposure he has had. There is also a new video to accompany it (on youtube). It would be great if you could update your post to let people know. I can supply links if you would like to share those too. Thanks, Kate & Mattias

    1. Tim B avatar

      Thanks for letting me know, I’ll check it out.

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