A brand new album of Malawian roots music is the inaugural launch of a brand new report label from the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA). A collaboration with California label Hen House Studios, Mass MoCA Records launched the Kasambwe Brothers’ self-titled album at present, and you may hear it beneath.
The Kasambwe Brothers are a band of 4 many years, based mostly within the Ndirande township close to Malawian capital Blantyre. They discovered their strategy to a Mass MoCA residency with assist from Hen Home and Luc Deschamps, the director of the Jacaranda Foundation and France’s honorary consul to Malawi. Watch a documentary on the making of the album, which entails collaborators from the Massachusetts music scene, beneath. Clement Kammwamba is the artist behind the quilt portray.
Mass MoCA Information will function in tandem with the museum’s curatorial ethos, a press launch notes, and is working as a three-year pilot. Museum director Kristy Edmunds mentioned, “By becoming a member of forces with Hen Home Studios and having the ability to faucet into the exceptional variety of music studios and intimate venues within the native space—the components for a hand-made report label had been throughout us. I see this label as an extension of how we innovate to assist the mobility of artists’ concepts and join audiences the world over.”
Harlan Steinberger, the producer and engineer behind Hen Home, added, “Although expertise at present can work wonders, the digital world has de-humanized us. I imagine in an older-world methodology that emphasizes the magic of a band making music collectively in a single room, enjoying off the creativity of the second. The humanistic method creates a deeper emotional listener expertise that may not solely be heard, but in addition felt.”
An album from Compton jazz artists Black Nile will observe in 2026, the press launch notes.
