Hailing from Harare in the mid 1980s, Robson Banda & the New Black Eagles introduced a new sound that mixed the up-tempo rhythms of jit and the more intimate chimurenga music. Mbira-based guitar licks bring a nostalgic feeling to these dance-floor gems championed at the time by legendary English DJ John Peel.

First ever reissue
100% analog direct tape-to-disc cut from the original master tapes

Nyami Nyami Records are pleased to announce the reissue of the classic Zimbabwean album SOWETO, with the same tracklist and original artwork, produced at the peak of jit’s popularity in the mid-1980s. While staying within the chimurenga music framework pioneered by Thomas Mapfumo and Jonah Sithole, Robson Banda and the New Black Eagles produced a crisp, precise and exciting sound, emphasising the upbeat dance music favoured on the dancefloors of independent Zimbabwe’s nightspots and beerhalls.
The band was formed in 1980 and has eight impressive albums to its name. Banda’s roots were foreign, but his music was quintessentially Zimbabwean, as these lively mid-eighties recordings demonstrate; he had previously played with Mapfumo’s short-lived Acid Band and Jonah Moyo’s Devera Ngwena Jazz Band before forming the New Black Eagles.