Heavy Metal Africa: Life, Passion, and Heavy Metal in the Forgotten Continent by Edward Banchs

Author:Edward Banchs [Banchs, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Word Association Publishers
Published: 2016-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

“It was the Wish of God…”

The man sat patiently in the grasp of the sunlight shining through the sliding door opposite his chair, waiting for me to arrive with a drink in his hand. He was rather timid and wore a nervous smile. It was a Sunday and he was wearing his finest jacket and hat, as he had already attended his local church service. His shoes were worn down and haggard, but they were his Sunday best. He stood up when I walked in the room, though I was slightly embarrassed by the gesture. I, too, was nervous meeting him. I was told he was to be called Newton. The room was tranquil and the respect for him was such that no one dared to interrupt our discussion. The breeze blowing in sounded like thunder as we began our conversation.

The band Newton had formed in 1981, Balafomanga, was highly regarded as one of the first – if not the first – rock band in Madagascar. “I played with my brother, then I started Balafomanga. We [heard] this music on the radio and on cassette tape. The first time I heard this music, it became my life. I wanted to play drums, so I built a drum set from plastic,” he said with a slight chuckle. “It was the wish of God. The Bible says that Christ is the rock, then we started to love the rock.”

“The first time, it was strange for people to get our stuff,” he remembered. Recalling very, and I mean very, quietly, he added, “the young people can get this music easy, but their parents didn’t really get this music. In the ‘80s, there were not a lot of people who would go to the shows, but after [a few] months, there were a lot of people.” Balafomanga’s style is not that of hard rock, nor a heavy metal band sound that was common to the period. “We were rock and roll. Chuck Berry!” he explained.

“They were famous at the time. They played at a festival for all genres,” added his friend Jonah, in whose house we were meeting. Himself a rocker, Jonah formed his band Inay in 1985 on the heels of what Newton and his band members had instigated. Balafomanga’s name came up often during my trip through Madagascar. So many musicians in Madagascar mentioned Balafomanga as one of the bands that allowed rock bands to have a template, a model for how it was possible to write and perform original rock music in a country that had yet to experience this on their own. After all, meeting modern rock and metal bands was absolutely pointless without grabbing a better appreciation of those who laid the foundation for this generation.

Other bands whose names were cited as pioneers in the Malagasy rock and metal community include acts such as Tseletra, Kadradraka 2000, Maingoka, Pumpkins, Test and Black Jack. Others, including Kazar, Kiaki, Green and Iraimbilanja, also played vital roles in the formation of Madagascar’s rock scene.

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