WITCH

Theresa Ng’ambi and Hanna Tembo are featured with two songs on the album "Zango" of lengendary Zamrock band WITCH. It was released on 2 June 2023 on Desert Daze Sound in partnership with Partisan Records, nearly 40 years after Witch's previous studio album. "Zango" won the 2024 "Libera Award" in the category "Best Global Album". Theresa toured with the band in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Scandinavia in 2023/24. During the tour, the album "Sogolo" was recorded in Berlin at the amazing Big Snuff Studio. The album was released in 2025 on Partisan Records again and produced by Jacco Gardner.

The collaboration with Witch is for Theresa very special. She has a long history with band leader Emmanuel "Jagari" Chanda. Theresa describes him as her father in music, he was already her mentor at Evelyn Hone College in Lusaka during her study time. WITCH is the synonym and short form for "We Intend To Cause Havoc", widely seen as the most popular Zambian band of the 1970s.

In Making of Zango, we are taken behind the scenes of the making of the band's first album in nearly forty years: Zango. Titled "Zango" after the communal spaces in Zambian villages where people would gather round to share ideas. The band set up their own "Zango" in Lusaka’s legendary DB Studios......

"Malango" is a story about the wisdom of the bee. The story behind is never judge the book by its cover.

WITCH performing "Unimvwesha Shuga" live in the KEXP studio in Seattle. Recorded August 4, 2023

Theresa Ng'ambi explained about the recordings of "Unimvwesha Shuga" in the studio in Lusaka:
"In that studio, we felt the freedom to express ourselves in ways that are often restricted in our own culture because of us being women. "Unimvwesha Shuga" is an expression of love and passion, we (Hanna and I) were gossiping about our fantasies as girls and the things we dreamt to express but wouldn’t normally be able to. To us, singing these words was a liberation to express our crazy fantasies."

Stefan Lilov, Hanna Tembo, Jagari Chanda, Theresa Ng'ambi, Patrick Mwondela, Joe Lyle, JJ Whitefield and Jacco Gardner (Witch KEXP crew)

Hanna Tembo and Theresa Ng'ambi on US Witch tour 2023.

“‘Waile’ was one of the songs that I brought to the WITCH when I joined in 1978. While it was played live often back in the day, it was never recorded until the new formation of the band picked it up 43 years later during a rehearsal on an island in Kenya, where the band embraced it and made it their own. A few months after that, they gave it a new lease of life by recording it in Lusaka’s legendary DB Studios. Sang in my native language Luvale, the subject matter is a nostalgic wailing for home of ancient African tribes that would eventually settle in Zambia.” – Patrick Mwondela

WITCH live in session at Karma Studios, London, December 2023.

KCRW presents WITCH performing “Stop the Rot” Live from KCRW HQ, Santa Monica, California, 2023.

Our cover of Chaka Khan‘s banger “Ain’t Nobody”… We recorded it at the legendary Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco, California in June 2023 to honour Chaka Khan’s introduction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The song “Set Free”, written by Theresa, is a soul-stirring plea woven in prayer. The song cries out like a wounded spirit yearning for release begging the heavens to break every chain and cradle the heart in mercy and light.

“When I wrote the lyrics for Nadi, I was in a studio in Berlin, surrounded by love and creative energy. The song came from my heart—an emotional need to transform something often viewed as dark, like the idea of ‘intending to cause havoc’ from the W.I.T.C.H. acronym, into something filled with love, light, and healing. Nadi speaks to the hidden parts of ourselves—the kind of love that isn’t always easy, but is real. It’s about reclaiming our past and shaping it into a brighter future. Nadi is a song for lovers, for those healing, and for anyone who’s ever dared to love against the odds. I chose to sing in Tumbuka—one of Zambia’s sweet, rarely spoken eastern languages—as a personal expression of pride and heritage. Enjoy Nadi—my love from Tumbukaland in Zambia.” Theresa Ng’ambi

Machiriso is a healing energy in Chewa and English. The lyrics are written by Theresa. "We intend to create harmony, WITCH, in the chaos we collide like stars that fall, every crack in the sky writes the beauty of it all....." Check out the full lyrics on YouTube. posted in June 2025

WITCH in Berlin in 2024 for the recording of "Sogolo" at the amazing Big Snuff Studio. From left to right: Jacco Gardner, Charlie Garmendia, Jagari Chanda, Hanna Tembo, Nicola Mauskovic, Theresa Ng’ambi, Stefan Lilov and Patrick Mwondela..