smokey haangala: aunka ma kwacha

Zambian writer and musician Smokey Haangala’s Aunka Ma Kwacha (The Money is Gone) is a release of mystical metallurgy, issued in 1976 and falling somewhere between psychedelic Zamrock, US folk, Kalindula, and Sundown Beat (music played after dark) from Tongaland. The unique mix of languages here (Bemba, Tonga, Lozi, and English) also suggests complex cultural crossroads. Underlying the album is the insistent beat of a primitive drum machine (totally unheard of in Zambia at the time) which parallels the pioneering experiments by Francis Bebey, Sly Stone, and Shuggie Otis. This is a release full of cautionary tales, folklore and references to magic, aspects of Zambian culture simultaneously mystifying and alluring to outsiders, part of what attracted Western readers to Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola’s hallucinatory Yoruba folktales. After becoming a household name in Zambia for his music, writing, and television appearances, Smokey Haangala died at the age of 38, the very week his book The Black Eye was published, abruptly ending his brilliant and ascending career. We are lucky to have his inimitable work to remember him by, Aunka Ma Kwacha resting comfortably in the pantheon of re-visionary works by Rodriguez, Kissoon Ramasar, TJ Hustler, and William Onyeabor.