In music and elsewhere, people gravitate towards underdog stories. They help us feel good, their stories often offering redemptive value from years of obscurity or destitution. Stephen Encinas was a producer in Trinidad that crafted the 1979 track "Disco Illusion", an intended commentary on the euphoria of the disco era and a hastily recorded follow-up to his debut 45. Emanuel Jagari Chanda was the lead singer for WITCH (We Intend To Cause Havoc), one of the leading lights in the Zamrock, a movement that flourished in seventies Zambia. However, "Disco Illusion" was greatly overshadowed by its predecessor "Rock a Bye Baby Love" – listed as one of Trinidad’s greatest pop songs - and duly faded into obscurity outside of the attention of Trini music connoisseurs. And while Chanda had a successful career fronting WITCH, Zambia’s political status as a one party-state and surrounding social ongoings took its toll. Nowadays Chanda works as a gemstone miner and many of his contemporaries are dead from the AIDS epidemic of the Eighties. Today, Chanda and synth player Patrick Mwondela are the only living members of WITCH and two of the few living beings remaining from the once dominant Zamrock scene.
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