Tuesday 6th October 2009 | Posted by Emily

I had an awful lot of fun in Lusaka trying to track down music for Global Soundtracks. Thanks to the advice of my host Will and the best driver in the world Nathan, I managed to avoid most of the commercial rubbish and big name  r'n'b guff from America you hear if you listen to the radio. That is unless you tune into one of two pretty great stations: ZNBC Radio 4 which has an amazing show on Saturday mornings and Nathan's favourite, Phoenix Radio. Alongside the annoying mainstream crap, these stations also have a few shows that play a mixture of the best old and new African music.

It was on one of the suicidal minibuses in Lusaka that I first heard old Zambian tracks that we initially mistook for Congolese or Botswananan - two countries far more readily associated with great music. The minibus driver was blasting out a request show, requests specifically for old Zambian favourites. It was wicked to hear that there was more to old Zambian music than the gospel I had heard. It also surprised me that with such incredible music available to influence young musicians, they seem more keen on using a lot of vocoder and trying to sound like Akon.

As soon as I got off the bus I headed to one of the markets to get ripped off by some rather pretty music dealers. My requests for the best old Rhumba, new Rhumba (Zambian and Congolese) and (less specifically) old and new 'decent' Zambian was met with slight amusement, a trip by our dealer to another stall, a lot of waiting around, some offers of gospel videos instead, and then eventually a stack of cds.

My favourite to begin with was 'Old Is Gold' until it got stuck in Will's car cd player. Now I like 'New Zambian Music mp3 2009'. Plenty of vocoder, but also some absolute crackers. I have no idea what any of these tracks are called - the tracklist text is understandably minute in order to fit all 156 of the tracks onto the back of a cd, but I'll do my best to find out and put the best on GS for everyone to enjoy.

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