Oslo, London
Visa complications have kept Esau Mwamwaya from performing in the UK for seven years – tonight, the band celebrate his long overdue presence with Afrobeat street party vibes
“We’ve waited seven years for this,” says Esau Mwamwaya, mentally waving aloft his freshly stamped visa. It’s a “momentous occasion” for The Very Best, a collaboration between Malawian singer Mwamwaya and French/Swedish production duo Radioclit. They met and formed in East London, but this is the first time Mwamwaya, after lengthy visa wrangles, has been allowed to play here since 2008. In the meantime, a minor cult has grown around their finely woven amalgam of Scandinavian EDM and traditional Malawian music, stoked not just by Mwamwaya’s elusive absence but also the presence of like-minded global pop pioneers MIA and Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig on their 2009 debut album Warm Heart of Africa. So tonight’s sort-of homecoming show to support new album Makes a King is a jubilant affair.
While Johan Hugo provides the Balearic-friendly beats that sound like Terminators being riveted, topless and top-hatted guitarist Seye Adelekan brings the voodoo vibe and LA bassist Jutty Taylor adds the US R&B melodies – but Mwamwaya is the keystone. His rich pipes, singing largely in Chichewa, carry Afrotronic anthems such as Come Alive and Let Go (their Paper Planes), and his personality colours the band’s palette. He’s both political activist, raising a defiant fist to Malawi’s post-independence corruption on the Portishead-dank Hear Me, and tourism envoy, as Warm Heart of Africa – Malawi’s national nickname – tries to make Lilongwe the new Maga. When tracks such as Makes a King start sounding too Eurodisco, it’s Mwamwaya who steers them in the direction of a modernist Transglobal Underground, conjuring an Afrobeat street party and bringing the sub-Saharan heat.
Continue reading...by Mark Beaumont via Electronic music | The Guardian
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