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The Malawi Twitterati are trying to solve The Curious Case of Dan Kalima. The MUMA Awards last night awarded the title of Best RnB Artist to an apparently unknown singer-songwriter going by the name of Dan Kalima. Unfortunately he could not be there to collect the award in person, and so fellow musician Menes La Plume kindly did the honours on his behalf – and so the plot thickens…

Now who is this Dan Kalima guy? People are searching high and low for the answer. For some reason google does not help this time. We can reveal the truth. Dan Kalima is not some newcomer to the Malawi scene, he is in fact the well known and respected Sirius also known as Danny Kalima. He is using Danny Kalima (google THAT and you’ll find him) internationally and somehow he got nominated for MUMA as Dan Kalima. You can find his biography, photos and videos of him here.

Spotify (the music streaming service) has this cool feature where you can ‘follow’ any artist in their catalogue (providing you have a Spotify account). Obviously Spare Dog Records like the idea of people following our artists – so we’ve added a bunch of green Spotify-buttons around the web site for you to click on.

Following an artist means that you’ll be notified by Spotify whenever that artist releases new material (great huh?) and it also means that the artist and we will be really extra happy to see a growing following rooting for great Malawian music!

To make it super easy for you – here are the buttons:

Presenting Street Rat

If you have ever been to Mayoka Village in Nkhata Bay, Malawi, and seen Michael Mountain perform
– you will know what I’m talking about:

HOW BIG IS THE LAKE???
IT’S SO BIG, SO BIG!!!

Here’s a special soundcloud streaming just for you! We will keep the link alive for another week or so, so tell all your friends! And if you like Michael’s stuff, you might want to go to iTunes and get his brand new album!

The song ‘How Big Is The Lake’ has been a long standing Nkhata Bay favourite tune, and anyone who’s been around Mayoka Village on a Wednesday night and seen Michael perform will remember this super catchy sing-along (often accompanied by Gift’s voice all the way from the kitchen!) Michael plays at Mayoka to this day.

Malawi’s own Michael Mountain! In this world premier of his newest music video Michael sings about the hardships of poverty. It is filmed on location on the long walk from his remote mountain village down to Nkhata Bay, in Northern Malawi.

If you like Michael’s music, why not support it!

Introducing one of the coolest guys on earth: Michael Mountain! His international debut album ‘Nowhere Else To Go’ is a fantastic old-school style, low-key but heavy-hitting reggae. Michael is a small-scale tobacco and maize farmer, a community organiser, a reflective thinker, a prolific songwriter and a charismatic artist from the mountains of the Nkhata Bay region in Northern Malawi.

Spare Dog Records know of no-one who sounds like Mountain Mike, and today we are incredibly proud to be able to release an album of this calibre!

Available now on iTunes, Amazon or your favourite platform.

Spare Dog Records are very happy to announce that we will be releasing the international debut album of Michael Mountain, called ‘Nowhere Else To Go’ on the 26th of January!

Here is a short interview with the man himself!

If you haven’t seen this one yet, here’s your chance! I shot this interview in Nkhata Bay, in July 2014, as a preamble to the album “The Young Shall Grow” and Danny is telling us about his music and his upbringing, what the album will be like and the city of Lilongwe – the capital of Malawi.

Buy album on iTunes:

This is Alan. He’s the latest recruit to our team. He will mainly be responsible for monitoring and producing content for our Twitter account. He’s hasn’t been to Malawi yet, but he loves Malawi music, and he knows his social media stuff. Alan says:

“Listen, we have to do something about this Twitter Thing… Everybody loves us on Facebook, but we don’t have enough followers on Twitter! Well, with me in charge, we’ll turn this ship around! Now click  here to join the fun!”

Better do as he says, People!