Tonga Boys give themselves a proper send-off on “Moto (Fire)”, thanking their friends in Poland, talking up their own sound and shouting out every member of the band before calling it a wrap. Albert Manda has since left Mzuzu, their home city in northern Malawi, to try his luck in Tanzania while Peter Kaunda has moved down to Lilongwe, so their fifth album, Tonga Boys vs Artificial Intelligence, due on 11 November through the Warsaw label 1000HZ, may well be their last. The song is one of two out ahead of the album, along with “Terinah (She Who Has a Strange Voice)”.
The song opens by honouring the people helping Tonga Boys get on the map, naming Bogusia, Waldek, Maria and Wojtek, and later singles out Bogusia and Wojtek as the friends who have backed the band in Poland. The fire in “Moto kumapiri”, fire in the mountains, is Tonga Boys’ own music, sung again and again: it gets women “ululating”, puts the band on FM radio and brings everyone onto the dancefloor as equals, whoever’s child they are. Among the names in the closing roll call is “Peter Poland”, otherwise Piotr Cichocki, the Warsaw anthropologist and producer who co-founded 1000HZ and shot the video with the band.
The music around Mzuzu runs all through the album, especially malipenga, a military-style dance music of the northern lakeshore played on kazoo-like horns and drums, and vimbuza, the drumming and song of spirit-possession healing. Across sessions in Mzuzu, Katula and Warsaw between 2019 and 2026, Solomon Njikho added a sound module to his main drum, which drags the songs towards dub and noise. Despite the title, the musicians played every note themselves, using artificial intelligence only for the cover art.
Stream “Moto (Fire)” HERE and pre-order Tonga Boys vs Artificial Intelligence through THIS LINK