By Jonathan Owen
While there are many musical groups in Malawi, they tend to be choirs (usually connected with a church) or small bands. Rock, jazz, hip-hop, rap, reggae and R&B can all be found, as well as fusions of Malawian traditional music with forms from South Africa and the Congo. It is not odd to hear bars blasting the most popular, recent gospel songs! Guitar, banjo, and keyboard are popular, and accordion finds frequent use. Some groups use commercially produced instruments, while others use instruments they have handmade—bass, guitar, and full percussion sets. Lyrics are most often in English or Chichewa, the national languages of Malawi. The annual “Lake of Stars” music festival has brought together international and Malawian artists for the last 14 years.
Classical music, on the other hand, has little current expression in Malawi. Blantyre—the economic hub of Malawi, with a population of roughly a million people—has the Blantyre Music Society, which performs a mix of choral and instrumental pieces twice a year at an amateur level. The choir has around 30 members, while the orchestra has 15-20—most of whom play strings or woodwinds. In six years of living in Blantyre, I did not hear of anyone who plays horn anywhere in Malawi. A couple of months ago I discovered a man who used to play horn in high school in Canada—but that is as close to a horn player as I have found! Trumpet and trombone are better represented, but instruments are thin on the ground. I know of one B flat horn in Malawi, but when we return to there in January, I hope to bring my horn with me—perhaps the only double horn in the country.
Jonathan Owen is a graduate of Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Becky have both been active as missionaries in Malawi since 2012. He teaches at the Evangelical Bible College of Malawi.
