Zoona Malawi

It’s easy to mistake the buzzing bass and regular thump of the kick drum on the first few seconds of “Abale Ndikuwuzeni” for something electronic. In fact, the album was entirely recorded on the shores of Lake Malawi and features one man with a few simple (but fascinating) instruments. Almost everything Gasper Nali plays here is homemade, mostly from recycled materials: his babatoni — an instrument he played in a 2007 “viral” video that first got him noticed internationally — is constructed with a part of an oil drum as its sound box, a very long (almost three meters!) eucalyptus pole as a neck and a wire from a car tyre as its one and only string. He plays it by hitting the string with a stick and moving an empty beer bottle up and down it to change the tone. Each track is a variation on the same few notes, but he uses his voice — clear and expressive, in contrast to the whirring, metallic babatoni — to stir up different emotions.