Page 35 - 2020 SoM Journal Vol 73 No 1 FINAL_Neat
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A Continuing Legacy of Song                      27

                 Money, which you were after, has corrupted you
                 Listen you young people with wisdom
                 We are crying for our country
                                                26
                 We are crying for our country Malawi.

          Such  interjections  of  pointedly  political  notions  into  familiar  asilikali  lyrical
          patterns  also  continued  well past  independence  and  into  the  era  of  multiparty
          democracy, seeping into Malawian popular song.
                 The form was also adapted to address - first in muted tones and later
          much more explicitly - a variety of “troubles” facing the nation. A very poignant
          example came as popular culture agents (far more than government agencies)
          addressed a mounting national health crisis. In the 1990s the then trendy Malawi
          Police Orchestra band sounded a musical warning: “Kunja kuno kwaopsya” [Out
          Here it’s Scary]:

                 Boys and girls!
                 Ladies and Gentlemen!
                 We are at war with AIDS!
                 Its weapons are the viruses!
                 We really have nowhere to run to.
                 Our shields are condoms, eh!
                 Nowadays it’s dangerous out there.
                 These viruses are living in the blood.
                 Every day we have a funeral.
                 Doctors say there is no hospital medicine.
                 Asing’anga [traditional healers] say there are no herbs for it in the forest.
                 Let’s take good care of those who are found to have this disease.
                 We really have nowhere to run to.
                                             27

          In the midst of a true public health emergency, what better way to keep alive the
          asilikali “Sole” tradition of singing about “troubles”?
                 Indeed, a similar discourse of sorrows, with origins in that same lyrical
          legacy of Malawian soldiers, was also borrowed at about the same time to fuel
          criticism  of  political  opponents  after  a  national  plebiscite  ended  one-party
          domination of Malawian governmental affairs. With President Kamuzu Banda
          attempting to win re-election after thirty years of despotic rule, Soja Lucius Banda
          sang of Kamuzu and his cronies:

                 There were some people suffering,
                 While others were enjoying.
                 There were some people working hard,

                 26  Song recorded by Christopher Kamlongera, “Malipenga,” 207.
                 27  Song recorded by John Lwanda, “The [in]visibility of AIDS,” 118.
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