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22 The Society of Malawi Journal

in the music and popular culture press of contemporary Malawi, another musical
legacy evident in both Lucius Banda’s music and the country’s history is that of
its more than a century-old military establishment.
A decade ago, John Lwanda accurately asserted that “the Malawi popular
music space has not lost most of its indigenous origins and functions,” while
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nonetheless overlooking contributions from the nation’s asilikali heritage. A
more recent review of the Malawian music scene also makes scant mention of this
tradition, despite allusions to the development of military-style musical dance
groups following the First World War, focusing instead on “the relationship of
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those dances across districts and countries” rather than their lyrical development.
Certainly the Malawian military itself (as well as a few scholars) recognize the
significance of the army marching band, a prominent feature of World War
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recruiting tours and still going strong decades after independence. Extoling one
of the first regimental bands formed in Malawi, the British Central Africa annual
report for 1906-07 suggested “the brass band appeals to the native[s who have] …
undoubted musical proclivities.”
8
A more enduring musical legacy, however, is that of Malawian soldiers’
lyrics, earning them a wide reputation as “the singers of East Africa” during the
Second World War. Gerald Handley, a war correspondent in Burma alongside
several Malawian KAR battalions, praised their lyrics as having “power and music
in them.” And Malawi’s pre-eminent historian, George Shepperson—who
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commanded a Malawian King’s African Rifles company in Burma—agreed: “I

5 Lwanda, “Music advocacy,” 140.
6 Richard Michael Deja, “From place to placelessness: Malawian musicians,
commercial music, and social worlds in southern Africa,” PhD diss. University of
Illinois, 2016, 93. Dr Lwanda himself, however, as a keen observer of Malawian
popular culture, cautions that “it is often tempting to judge African popular music
… by its form or style rather than its content”; John Lwanda, “The [in]visibility
of HIV/AIDS in the Malawi public sphere,” African Journal of AIDS Research 2,
2(2003): 117.
7 Major [later Lt. Colonel] James Njoloma, The Malawi Army: A Hundred Years
Today (Blantyre, Malawi: [Central Africana], 1991): 15; “Army Band and Corps
of Drums,” Msilikali 1(1974): 51. Both of these publications were produced with
the support of the Malawi Defence Force. The contribution of military bands to
Malawian music is briefly acknowledged in M. Strumpf, “Some Music Traditions
of Malawi,” African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music
7, 4 (1999): 110-21, as well as by Lwanda and Phoya, “Malawi at 50,” 46.
8 Quoted in “Appendix B: Bands,” H. Moyse-Bartlett, The King’s African Rifles
(Aldershot: Gale & Polden), 1956): 694.
9 Gerald Hanley, Monsoon Victory (1946; rpt. London: Mayflower Paperback,
1969): 120.