WITCH Announce Debut New Zealand Shows

Revered as the foremost Zamrock group of a wave of psyched-out collectives to emerge from Zambia in the 1970s, WITCH aka We Intend To Cause Havoc have announced their first ever Aotearoa headline shows. WITCH's musically electrifying first era encompassed seven genre-spanning studio albums from 1972 until 1984, as post-independent restrictions in Zambia (requiring them to play only daytime events) eventually prompted a long period of dormancy for the group. WITCH's legend grew over the decades, leading founding frontman Emanyeo "Jagari" Chanda (who initially left in 1976) to reactivate the band for live touring in 2012. Launching their first new album in nearly four decades Zango earlier this year to notable acclaim, dare not miss WITCH's local debut in full force at Tāmaki Makaurau's Hollywood Avondale and Pōneke's Meow this coming March — brought to you by Banished Music and Strange News Touring...

WITCH (We Intend To Cause Havoc)

Wednesday 13th March - Hollywood Avondale, Auckland
Thursday 14th March - Meow, Wellington

Tickets available via Banished Music

Listen to WITCH's wahed-out 1973 classic 'Home Town', featured on their debut album Introduction...

Hit play on WITCH's 'Avalanche of Love' featuring Sampa the Great, from their new 2023 album Zango...

Watch the official trailer for 2021's documentary We Intend to Cause Havoc (W.I.T.C.H.)...

Press release:

Banished Music and Strange News are losing their minds with excitement to announce that cult Zambian psych-rock superstars WITCH - aka We Intend To Cause Havoc - are touring Aotearoa for the very first time. This is huge news for record collectors, psych-funk heads, and fans of Africa’s rare and radical musical history, some of whom will have waited fifty years for this mighty moment.

Once considered “The Beatles of Zambia”, and the kings of the Zamrock genre they spearheaded, Zambia may not be the first country that springs to mind when thinking of Africa’s rich musical history, but the sound WITCH created in the mid-1970s, fronted by the eternally enigmatic Jagari (named after Mick Jagger, naturally), fused influences ranging from The Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath, to James Brown, as well as their own traditional African rhythms and local songs.

At the height of their fame, WITCH lived up to their name and regularly caused havoc with their seven-hour shows, frontman Jagari’s wild antics, and maniacal fanbase. After some tumultuous decades that saw Zambia endure economic downturn, the AIDS crisis, wrongful arrests, and in recent years resorting to gemstone mining to make a living, sole surviving member Jagari has seen his rock star status restored, with a series of reissues reigniting the world’s interest.

Now, striking while the iron is red hot, Jagari has teamed up with WITCH’s disco-era keyboard player Patrick Mwondela and a collective of incredible musicians from around the world to take this new reincarnation of WITCH back out on the road at long last. Touring in support of their celebrated new album Zango - recorded in the same Zambian studio the band recorded seminal album Lazy Bones - and now the subject of a feature-length documentary film, this phenomenal band’s place in the weird and wild story of rock’n’roll is clearly far from over.

The fuzz and the funk are stronger than ever, the wah wah is alive and well, and WITCH are set to cause their unique and extraordinary hurricane of havoc here in March 2024. Hell yeah!