Zamrock: The Psychedelic Sound of Young Zambia

When a young nation’s president decreed that 95% of all music played on the radio must be Zambian, he didn’t expect it to lead to a psychedelic rock revolution.

There are few experiences as joyous as being introduced to an entire genre of music previously unknown to you, from a part of the world you’ve seldom thought about. This recently happened to me with Zamrock; a brand of psychedelic rock which sprung up in Zambia from a particular set of political and cultural conditions, and faded away just as quickly a few years later.

Zambia was once Northern Rhodesia, a British colony. The name Northern Rhodesia distinguished it from Southern Rhodesia; predecessor to modern Zimbabwe. The land which Zambia now occupies played host to the most ancient of human societies, with archaic humans having lived there over 200,000 years ago. In 1964, Northern Rhodesia won its independence from Britain and became a republic.

Zambia’s founding father, President Kenneth Kaunda, followed an ideology he called ‘Zambian Humanism’, a combination of socialist economic policies and what he considered old-fashioned African values of trust, mutual aid and loyalty to the community.

In the late 60s…