Interview with Happy Mphande and Piotr Cichocki from Owls Are Not Collective

 The intercontinental group Owls Are Not, bringing together musicians from Poland, Malawi, and Tanzania, presents their latest album "Radio Zodiak" - a record that evolves from their surreal, dystopian experiments toward more cohesive yet spacey songwriting, enriched with dadaistic sound collages. "Radio Zodiak" blends elements of East African IDM, prog, traditional ngoma drumming, avantpop, 90s-style electronica, ngoni vocal hymns, trip-hop, and art punk. The result is a very particular version of global / goth / afro / pop.

I have invited two members of the collective to tell me something about their rhythm magick...

1. What was your path to starting a publishing business? In the current, rapidly changing

distribution climate, how do you manage to reach your listeners? 

Piotr Cichocki:  You're starting with a difficult question (laughter). It's difficult because the climate you're

asking about has slipped away – much like the Earth's natural one – from our control. Did you know

that in 2022, 94,000 tracks were uploaded to streaming services daily, and in 2023 it was already

120,000 daily? The majority of these tracks have around zero streans. For me, in this situation, all

thinking about presence, about success, lacks a bit of its meaning, because success now is probably

about getting reach without any assumption of who will remember it in a year.

So, I try not to think at all about 1000HZ and Owls Are Not in business or marketing terms, or

generally in terms of the music market. It even seems to me that my musical and publishing

activities have always been about contestation, distancing myself from the mainstream currents and

rules, creating a different proposition – at least ever since I had the chance to see the mainstream

from the inside – back in the day with the band Artybishops, or the mainstream alternative. 1000HZ

is not a typical label; I rather think of it a bit as a research method, a bit as a bridge connecting

different, economically asymmetrical cultural worlds through exchange, a bit as a performative

experiment, and only lastly as a business. 1000HZ sends almost all of its sales proceeds to

contracted Malawian artists. I also treat Owls Are Not as an experiment in being an extraterritorial

band, also to avoid that field where many talented people compete for very limited resources. In the

music world, I've met many wonderful, talented people, but also just as much frustration,

discriminatory politics, ruthlessness, and greed.

So, in short, we also operate to expand the space where these negative aspects are as minimal as

possible. 1000HZ and Owls Are Not could be described as an organizational experiment, and the

album "Radio Zodiak" is literally and figuratively directed toward cosmos.

Happy Mphande:  And also I should just thank God for the creation or creativity that is within us all because for it

to be done, it also involved God's grace.

Piotr Cichocki:  Personally, I don't make such references, but I respect that Happy Mphande sees it that way.

2. Owls are Not is a unique project where different philosophies of various music genres collide.

How did you meet and how did it all start? 

Happy Mphande Now, first and foremost, I would like to say my name is Happy Grandson Chibula Mpande. We

have a studio that is called Unity, and that studio belongs to us. And I am the founder of Unity,

director of Unity Studios. I am an artist as well as a producer; normally I do more videos, video

productions, whereby I have my friends that do audio programming. So when we joined our friend

Peter, he managed to record my audio.

I met my friend Peter here in Malawi. He came for his own research. And therefore we met at a

certain studio called Henna Studios that belongs to my friend Auden Nthala, who you may know as

the leader of the Katawa Singers group

(https://digitialindigenous1000hz.bandcamp.com/album/digital-indigenous-05-katula), here in

Mzuzu. So we started chatting, exchanging ideas. And another day he visited us, my family, at my

home, whereby we discussed a lot about music. From there he asked me if I could help him with his

research in the villages. So I went there. I told him yes, let's go. And then we went to visit Bulala,

whereby we did the research and recorded some music of village groups. From there we discussed

making a certain collaboration that is Unity Studio Media Productions.

PC And I'll go back even further to 2012 when Owls Are Not was formed in Warsaw, as a still quite

normal band back then in terms of organization, although peculiar musically, as it started from an

attempt to combine post-punk and IDM. Back then, I joined the experimenting rhythm section of

Piotr Mazurek and Bartek Kamiński. Over several years, drummers changed in this line-up –

including Rafał Klimczuk, Marcin Suliński – and in the meantime, shortly after one of the longer

tours in France, Piotr Mazurek also left. Those were years very creative compositionally and intense

in terms of gigging, but due to that intensity and probably the frustration I mentioned earlier, the

band in this incarnation hit a wall. This coincided timing-wise with the beginning of my research in

Malawi and Tanzania, where I was learning about local ways of making music, and it stopped being

obvious to me that a band must have the single, obligatory form of a fixed group of people traveling

from club to club, from venue to venue with concert material. That's when the hybrid line-up, you

could say a band/network, formed and recorded the album "Radio Tree" a similar formula was used

for the WILD/LIFE album "Maloto/Dreams" and now "Radio Zodiak" is an extension of that with

a significant contribution from Happy, as well as other Polish and Malawian artists.

3. How do you manage to work remotely at Owls are Not?

HM Yeah, like I said earlier on, about how we managed to work on these projects for the sake of

Amaliya Group (the drummers of the Vimbuza cult whose recordings 1000HZ Records released in

2021: https://sacralgrooves1000hz.bandcamp.com/album/viyezgo-vimbuza-from-mzimba-south).

As I said, when we went to do our research for cultural things in our home village, we managed to

visit Malia who is basically at Endindeni and record their music for our ethnographic projects there.

From there, that's when we came back to Mzuzu to our studios. So when we reached Mzuzu, that's

when we started recording some new tracks that are sung by me, Happy Mphande, recorded by my

friend Peter.

PC I'll add to that, that the current mode of work for Owls Are Not partly results from the activities

we can undertake when I'm in Malawi or Tanzania (unfortunately, my mobility possibilities

resulting from having a so-called "good passport" are much higher), and partly from what colleagues

– Happy, William Mkolongo, Andy One, Martin Kaphukusi, or Lilian Yohana – record in their own

studios and what we can send to each other. Often this is part of a larger collaboration, because as in

Happy's case, I also released his solo album and we jointly realized the recordings of Amaliya

Group. William is a member of BlackFace Family, whose two albums have already been released

on 1000HZ Records, and now we are also working on Andy's second solo album.

HM So after my friend went back to Poland, we're just communicating here and there. And these

tracks I send him through WhatsApp. So it was a normal chat, like a family. As I said, we know

how we work with each other. But there are some other tracks that I made myself, full arrangement.

As I said earlier, I'm also a producer, though I'm based in videos. I produced some of the tracks for

the album “Relke Meto”. 

https://digitialindigenous1000hz.bandcamp.com/album/digital-indigenous-03-relke-meto Relke was my young brother who passed away a couple of years ago,

after he met some armed robbers who killed him in South Africa. So I composed a song for him.

So, those songs I composed only by myself were published by my friend under my name, and the

ones we did together are for the band.

4. You use both acoustic and electronic tools to create music. How does this fit into the

philosophy of what you do?

PC This philosophy changes from album to album, although it has a certain main direction, related

precisely to experimenting with what a band, a creative process, or a studio session can possibly be.

The current philosophy in terms of production was based not on assuming the use of some types of

sound sources while eliminating others, but rather on seeking out what is available (with the

exception of AI tools – they were used but only for strictly mechanical tasks, like isolating vocal

samples), in order to realize the sound we imagined. I think it's a concept that characterized the

explosion of electronic music in the 90s, and there's probably something to it, as those are the

sounds that shaped me as a future musician. Primarily, however, the concept was to also think in

terms of visions and imaginations, creating mood and space – not necessarily for relaxation, but

rather for a different kind of journey. This is perhaps Happy's influence, but also that of other

Malawian artists, to think about music a bit in terms of storytelling, like a film, for instance. A film

for the ears (Laughter).

5. How would you describe the creative process of your project?

HM These two songs, Tikondwere and Tiye, it was a free session. My friend just gave me some

instruments and I said I could see if I can manage. So it was a free session when he gave it, when he

played. I said I can manage, and I did it. It wasn't like we wrote anything down. No, I just had the

instrument and therefore I created at the very same moment and I made a track.

PC That was an excellent improvisation, of course it was a bit edited afterwards, still though it was

spontaneous. But it's not the rule. For example, with Lilian, with whom we did the track

"Emergency" it was a gradual process of compositional, arrangement, and lyrical work.

6. Is there a plan or a more deliberate possibility of hearing you live someday?

HM Yes, the dream or the plan might be there to say one day we should perform live. And it is a

good plan. But this is a challenge. You may know that for us Africans it is very difficult to make

possibilities of live performance due to finances and the right to internationally travel and perform.

But life is good. And I really wish that one day maybe we can perform, that it can be easier and

more possible.

PC It would be easier to return to regular playing with a European line-up, and some former band

members are even toying with such visions, which I quite like. But due to financial challenges or

this good passport – bad passport situation it makes a possibility of playing live and travelling with

our music extremely difficult to happen. That’s why, Owls Are Not, at this moment, is a bit like a

sonic utopia that can exist in recordings. It's also possible that when it does materialize live, it might

not necessarily happen in Europe perhaps Tanzanians or Malawians will hear our concerts first. It's

not at all an easy idea to realize, one that crossed my mind a few years ago, but who knows.

7. Plans for the future?

HM As I said, I have a studio, or rather I should say I had a studio. It happened at a certain time

when I went to the village. There was a funeral of my stepmother. Unfortunately, when we were

there, thieves came and demolished my studio and stole our properties. We had computers, we had

MIDI keyboards, and we had cameras. Unfortunately, they took it all away. So Unity, as of now, it

is only us who are available, but not the instruments. But that's life. How it goes on? We understand

that maybe another day we will have it back because it is our plan. And it is in my mind that one

day I should record more music with a good message.

PC Compared to Happy, I am in a privileged situation, and I'm writing down ideas for the next

tracks, also exchanging ideas with other artists in the Owls Are Not network. Returning to your first

question, I try not to be discouraged by the rather unfavourable situation for musicians, and if I

succeed, expect more from Owls.

Bandcamp