On Easter Sunday, when Christians across the world celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ, reggae group Black Missionaries conquered Club 24/7 in Chileka, Blantyre, offering a non-stop performance that lasted for more than five hours. The reggae outfit, popularly known as Ma Blacks, performed at the popular venue courtesy of Southern Region Press Club.
The club organised the gig to raise funds for their agriculture project. The show, which pulled an impressive audience in the late hours, also turned out to be a perfect platform for Black Missionaries to let people sample some of their new singles off their upcoming Kuimba 13 album.
The four singles— produced by OBK and Ralph Ching’amba—are ‘Story’, ‘Amapilira’, ‘Waliwali’ and ‘Times to Come’. The group has also dropped two music videos including ‘Waliwali’, produced by Kanchowa. There were delays in starting the concert due to electricity supply issues and, later, a prolonged sound check.
But these were not enough to keep away reggae enthusiasts from enjoying Ma Blacks Kuimba sounds, including the new tracks that have been uploaded on YouTube. With another show in the commercial city of Blantyre at Blues Bar and Restaurant featuring Patience Namadingo and Saint, there were a few people in the early hours of the show but the situation improved late on. T
he Evergreen Band opened the performances on the night, which also saw the presence of Queen Sheba, who is based in the United Kingdom, offering some covers before paving the way for Black Missionaries, which started off with its early pacesetters of Moda Fumulani and Khozie Masimbe.
There was no Anthony Mr Cool Makondetsa, a usual cast, who warms up for Ma Blacks as he lost an in-law recently. But Black Missionaries sealed the gap with a long performance that started close to midnight and went all the way to the early hours of yesterday. In their performances, they threw in the new songs, which turned out to be strange but, later, had people singing along.
“We are happy to have the songs on the market now. It has been a long time, four years, but we had to do it to give people good songs. For us, this is a mission and, soon, we will announce when we will launch Kuimba 13 album,” the group’s lead vocalist Anjiru Fumulan said.
He said they were positive that people would love the new singles released as well as the entire Kuimba 13 album. “We love constructive criticism but we believe in the project and feel it is good and a continuation of the message from other Kuimba albums. People should not rush to judge; let them listen to the message,” Anjiru said.
He then committed to working with Southern Region Press Club to fulfill their dream. “We are where we are today because the press has been there for us and this is why we decided to come out and offer our support,” Anjiru said.
Southern Region Press Club’s team, speaking through Wezzie Chamanza Nyirongo and Bester Nyangw’a, said this was just the beginning as they had lined up more activities to realise their project.
“We will continue to work with Black Missionaries by organising more shows. We still need to raise more money to support our project, which is there to empower journalists,” Nyirongo said.
Nyang’wa also committed to support Black Missionaries through the production of a music video for one of the songs.
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