Hallelujah Chicken Run Band

An influential Zimbabwean group from the mid-'70s, Hallelujah Chicken Run Band were early innovators of the regional style that later came to be known as chimurenga. Initially formed to entertain workers in a small mining town, HCRB were notable for eschewing the rhumba and Afro-rock styles popular in the then British-ruled capital and infusing their music with political messages and traditional elements from the Indigenous Shona culture. A springboard for future star Thomas Mapfumo, the group became known for songs like "Ngoma Yarira" and "Murembo" and remained a vibrant and popular act for the remainder of the decade. A young trumpet player named Daram Karanga organized the original lineup of Hallelujah Chicken Run Band to entertain workers in the small copper mining community of Mhangura. At the time, Zimbabwe was known as Rhodesia and still under white colonial rule. The country's popular music of the early '70s was a mix of rhumba and English-language Afro-rock, which bands played in the hotel bars of the capital city, Salisbury (now known as Harare). Led by the dynamic singer/songwriter Thomas Mapfumo, HCRB initially employed this same approach, pleasing the white mine owners, but making little impact with the Black miners themselves. By imitating the sounds of the mbira thumb piano on the electric guitar and the rattles and shakers on the drum set, HCRB began to infuse their music with sonic elements from their own Indigenous culture, and perhaps unsurprisingly, their amped-up versions of traditional Shona songs were a huge hit. People began to notice, and in 1974 the band traveled back to the capital, where they entered and won a national music competition held by South Africa's Teal record label. Paired up with producer Crispen Matema, they recorded their first studio sessions, producing among other songs "Ngoma Yarira" and "Murembo," two massively influential songs in Zimbabwean popular music. During the course of 1974 and 1975, HCRB racked up several gold records and became national stars that helped to revolutionize the nation's music industry. Mapfumo eventually left and continued to pioneer chimurenga well into the 1980s. HCRB moved from Mhangura to the capital and endured a handful of lineup changes, though they remained a popular and vibrant live band and recorded some additional material. By the time Zimbabwe won its independence in 1980, Hallelujah Chicken Run Band had more or less splintered, with its members moving on to other projects and careers. Over the years, they appeared on occasional compilations celebrating their country's rich musical heritage, but it wasn't until 2006 that German archival label Analog Africa collected and digitized the bulk of HCRB's tracks into the CD anthology Take One. That same compilation received a deluxe reissue in 2020.
© Timothy Monger /TiVo