{"id":77742,"date":"2019-05-09T03:01:22","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T01:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=77742"},"modified":"2019-05-09T03:01:22","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T01:01:22","slug":"kwilimbes-cassette-recording-traced-in-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2019\/05\/09\/kwilimbes-cassette-recording-traced-in-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"Kwilimbe\u2019s cassette recording traced in UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sam Banda Jnr <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
HIS ART STILL LIVES\u2014Kwilimbe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Marek Norvid, who used to star with the late Bernard Kwilimbe when he was in the United Kingdom (UK), has found some of the cassette recordings of Kwilimbe with a UK band.<\/p>\n

Until his death in 2017, Kwilimbe was part of a musical group of veteran musicians known as Old Is Good Band.<\/p>\n

Kwilimbe was also one of the professional choreographers in the country.<\/p>\n

Norvid said yesterday in an email he has discovered a cassette recording of Kwilimbe\u2019s UK band, Afrodisiac, recorded in his sitting room in May 1982.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was the guitarist and writer in the band. The recording includes us doing \u2018Malaika\u2019 and \u2018Stop The War\u2019,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He, however, said he had sketchy details on his contact with Kwilimbe to finally do the recordings.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy memory is hazy about how Steve Smith, my cornet playing flatmate, and I met up with Bernard and his friend John. They were both doing a PGCE at the university here in Newcastle,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Norvid said Steve and him already had a band known as Specky4eyes because they both wore glasses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe decided to augment it with more musicians. Bernard joined on guitar and vocals and John, who came from St Vincent in the Caribbean, played bass,\u201d he said.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAs I indicated earlier, the band was called Afrodisiac. There are five numbers on the tape, all laced with a soul\/Latin\/reggae and Afro beat rhythms and two seem just like jams,\u201d<\/em> Norvid said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He added that the three other numbers are \u2018Malaika\u2019 with Bernard on lead vocals, \u2018Stop The War\u2019 [the Falklands War was ongoing] and \u2018Musique L\u2019 Africa\u2019, a vaguely reggae\/ Hawaiian ballad.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used a little electro Harmonix drum machine for the rhythm. You can hear Bernard doing a good Isaac Hayes impression on \u2018Stop the War\u2019. Bernard wrote to me shortly after returning to Malawi and I have always felt guilty that I didn\u2019t reply. I don\u2019t think I was in a good place at the time.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI found Bernard on Facebook in 2014 but, when I wrote to him, I did not get a reply. He was a great musician. I will get an engineer to digitise the recording and see if it can be sent to Malawi. I will do the needful because this music needs to be listened to and preserved,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sam Banda Jnr Marek Norvid, who used to star with the late Bernard Kwilimbe when he was in the United Kingdom (UK), has found some of the cassette recordings of Kwilimbe with a UK band. Until his death in 2017, Kwilimbe was part of a musical group of veteran musicians known as Old Is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77747,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77742\/revisions\/77747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}