WE INTEND TO CAUSE HAVOC: THIS IS ZAMROCK
We Intend To Cause Havoc
Zamrock is a musical genre that emerged in Zambia in the 1970s. Traditional Zambian rhythms combined with Afro Acid-Rock: the Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, and James Brown fused with African rhythms and bush village songs. At the peak of their popularity, W.I.T.C.H. often needed police to keep fans at bay while lead singer Jagari riled up crowds by stage diving from balconies.
After the reissue of their albums in 2010, W.I.T.C.H. (We Intend To Cause Havoc) found a new audience. Among them, filmmaker Gio Arlotta. Around 2012, his good friend Victoria sent him a song called Strange Dream and he was instantly drawn to its musicality, curious to know its backstory in a part of the world he knew very little about.
Two years later he found himself in Zambia on a cross-continental journey, shooting videos for his blog Is Your Clam In A Jam?. He thought that since the chances of being in that part of the world again would be slim, he should seize the moment and satisfy his curiosity about these funky guys standing cool on a raft wearing heels.
W.I.T.C.H. were the biggest rock band in Zambia in the 1970s and spearheaded the Zamrock genre. As Zambia's economy stagnated and the country buckled under the AIDS crisis, the band fell apart. Jagari, their charismatic lead singer, retreated to near-anonymity as a university music professor before being wrongfully arrested during Zambia's toughest hour. Now a man in his sixties, he spends his time mining gemstones, until very recently the band being just a nostalgic memory of his youth.
Largely unknown outside their home country, W.I.T.C.H. finally got the exposure they deserved when Now Again Records reissued their entire discography in 2012. In 2016 he began a collaboration with Dutch musicians Jacco Gardner and Nic Mauskoviç. In September 2017 W.I.T.C.H. headed out on its first-ever European Tour. In Fall 2019, their first North American tour.
Film Still
Zambia · · Bulldog Film Distribution
W.I.T.C.H. · We Intend To Cause Havoc
Documentary · Pantheon Pictures · Dir. Gio Arlotta
"What I'd like for the audience to take away is the inspiration to get up and follow their dreams, because you can never know when they will come true."
Gio Arlotta · DirectorWhat were some of the challenges of getting this production made, and some highlights?
I've taken almost every day in the last three years as a challenge to bring this vision to fruition, and I definitely had those sleepless nights questioning myself. The challenges have been as varied as digging through rooms of archive film looking for any footage of W.I.T.C.H. in the 1970s, spending a night in the Zambian bush after driving in the back of a pickup truck for six hours, bringing Jacco Gardner and Nic Mauskoviç to Zambia and organising a gig for them and Jagari in Lusaka, and organising Jagari's first European Tour.
What are your greatest inspirations and influences?
What has always fascinated me is the counter-culture and its roots. Whether it's in music, film or fashion, it's when people think for themselves, find their own voice and create something new and different from the status quo. Some of my favourite directors are Kenneth Anger, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Dennis Hopper. You could draw similarities between Searching For Sugarman and We Intend To Cause Havoc, but I've for the most part avoided watching documentaries since I began working on mine. I don't want someone else's choices to influence my creative decisions.
Why did you decide to shoot some footage in VHS and Super 8?
I'm mostly really attracted to distorted, yet unobtrusive lo-fi aesthetics and sounds. Whether it's a fuzzed-out guitar recorded in a basement in 1966 or a warped image captured through a faulty tape. Not being a digital native, my attraction to VHS is a nostalgic one. It reminds me of strange colours and shapes when your VCR jammed up. Those moments stuck. We decided to shoot in VHS and Super 8 to give it an analog psychedelic feel that's closer to what could have been achieved in Africa in those days.
You created LUKUNGU: A Rare Zamrock Mixtape during production. How did you get your hands on the music?
It's essential to understand that music shops don't exist in Zambia. In the 1990s the music industry took a massive hit and disintegrated, with Teal Records leaving the country and leaving a void filled by piracy. Most vinyl albums were simply thrown away. I spoke to people who told me they used them as frisbees. Most of the records I got were through personal contacts, newspaper ads, or by walking through markets and asking people. One of those is my friend Mwape, an elderly man who repairs watches on a cardboard stall on a busy street, but somehow manages to find me records from time to time.
For arranging this interview, for producing the film, and for introducing Antakly Projects to the funky sounds of Zamrock music.
This interview was conducted while the documentary was still in production. Read the companion essay: Cambodian Psych Rock: Ghosts in the Groove and Digginthru: Japan's Underground Music Culture.
