The re-appearance of Frank Kalonde

On March 9, Lyrical Pen column in the Weekend Nation had an entry with the headline ‘Frank Kalonde’s defeated bones’. It defined Kalonde’s album called ‘Fight our Bones’ as one such keepsake that brought so much promise which never was as the artist lost into obscurity and fans were left wondering what had happened.

The good news is that on the same day, the entry achieved its intentions as it managed to ‘smoke out’ one of the country’s top reggae musicians Frank Kalonde who has been hibernating for years after only releasing one album that shook the foundation of the reggae genre when it was released nineteen years ago.

Effie Kalonde, Frank’s elder sister contacted me immediately the newspaper hit the street on that Saturday and said Frank is around and will be talking to me soon. I really did not believe. It was a pleasant surprise nonetheless.

And indeed Frank contacted me and I was really interested to learn where he had been musically all these years to which he explained by going back in the days where he said when music industry started at the advent of political changes, it did so with no promoters in the industry.

Frank remembers that the only hope was Power FM 101 radio which still more failed to catapult Malawi music to international heights. As far as Frank is concerned, he says he did his best, but was stopped in his tracks by limited funds.

Fight our bones was not a plenteous compilation to start with. Side A had three tracks: ‘Sweet Mama’, ‘Token to Living’ and the title track ‘Fight our Bones’. On the flipside there were three tracks as well: ‘Easy Roots man’, ‘Unity’ and ‘Turn my Enemies’ and a bonus track which was an extended version of ‘Sweet Mama’.

This album is a rich souvenir considering that the lyrics for some of the tracks like ‘Sweet Mama’, ‘Token Living’ and ‘Fight our Bones’ were done by one of Malawi’s fallen literature sage Ken Kalonde, who was Frank’s sibling.

This production was recorded by the all-time great producer, the late Chuma Soko who also did drums, bass as well all guitars and keyboards on the album. And, believe it or not, the versatile Dan Sibale played the flute.

The backing vocals, he further wrote, were done by Frank himself, Francis Mengezi, McDonald Chinkango and ‘one man who I still respect as the pioneer of Malawi’s modern reggae music long before the revelation of Evison Matafale, the Zomba based the late Muga Mutaya’.

Kalonde however acknowledged that even with his absence from the scene he has still been getting massive demand for ‘Fight Our Bones’

He says people want genuine original audio CDs which he described as a surprise development. He however disclosed that there is now good news coming from him, nineteen years after coming on the scene.

“By the way,” he told me “I have new music to record anytime. That's the revival point”

He however said he hopes there are going to be interested promoters out there to develop Malawian musical artists.

I am really happy that Kalonde came out finally because he is one good talent that should not just remove itself from the musical scene in the manner it did.

He is one artist who promoters should be fighting for in an ordinary music market, I hope something musically wonderful will start happening for Malawi in terms of music promotion.

Kalonde says he want to collaborate with promoters to exploit Zambia, Lesotho, and Kenya which he says warm up greatly for Malawi music, I should believe Kalonde’s dreams for his second coming will materialise into reality.