Giddes Chalamanda, a Malawian composer and guitar player

Giddes Chalamanda is without any doubt a key figure in Malawian music both as an acoustic guitar player and a songwriter. He was born in 1930 in Chiradzulu (Malawi); he taught himself to play the guitar when he was twelve years old, and he is now teaching his children to play the instrument. Today his songs are very popular all over Malawi, especially among teenagers. Giddes’ compositions are frequently played by local radios, and he furthermore plays at the main musical events in Malawi and abroad. Giddes’ songs talk about everyday life experiences; most of them are about his wife or his sons and some of them are about important problems of contemporary society. In this paper, in order to investigate Giddes Chalamanda’s individual style both as composer and a guitar player, I am going to analyze one of his most famous songs: Che Meri (Miss Meri). The musical transcription will highlight the unique and very interesting motional pattern of the right hand to sound the strings of the instrument and how this guitar accompaniment ‘converses’ in a continuous interlocking game with the vocal line.