No. 078 - PK Chishala’s “Common Man” changed my life
The Zambian Kalindula song that set Chilufya Chileshe on a lifelong mission
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This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring weekly essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created (and illustrated) by Grace Lilly.
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• 3 min read •
It has been more than 30 years since “Common Man” hit the airwaves, this single song that sealed my fate. It moved my spirit, shaped my worldview, and captured my very body, deploying it in service of its clarion call. I say it changed my life, but really, it made my life. Sung in my native Bemba language, in the now largely extinct Kalindula style, its captivating tenor and poetic lyrics paint a stunning portrayal of the “common man” in times of scarcity and austerity.
Writing these words now, my senses are transported to my childhood dining table. The wooden six-seater, with makeshift seating often added for transitory family members. My father at the head of the table, with what I remember to be a big personality, big hands, and a gift for fascinating stories. They were always wholesome family lunches. The table filled with simple food, some of which we had grown ourselves. My small chubby arms reaching for lump after lump of nsima. Radio tunes softly wafting towards us. That's when we often heard it, that song. Played on either side of the news in that now too distant time when our family was intact and solid. A time when radio meant Radio 4, and “the news” was the 1 p.m. broadcast.
“Common Man” demanded to be heard. It announced itself from the first note. It called attention to something. It was a jovial, happy sound that delivered gut-wrenching blow after blow to the emotions and consciousness of the discerning listener. With its strong opening, the song bounces around inside one’s head, forces a flexing of vocal cords, makes the legs move and the body shake whether one likes it or not. Its words, though, make one feel things, even if they are only 12 years old, as I was. I learnt through listening that it’s possible to contain big feelings, big empathy, and big resolve in small bodies, small hearts, and small brains.
PK’s words cut deep. So deep that words alone cannot explain. His portrait of people whose station in life condemns them to poverty and hunger, with determination to come out of each day with their dignity intact, curating creative ways of masking the shame and the desperation. This song, sung by the man whom smallpox had picked out, tortured, and then left, but not before forever branding his boyhood face and robbing his eyes of sight. In “Common Man” this uncommon singer strung common words together to tell this tale. He bound them artfully with an earworm of a tune, which molded the manifesto of my life.
This song morphed my chubby, shy, eager self. It detoured me from dreams of becoming famous for an endless list of fantasies (Olympic sports, race car driving, plus-size modeling, a big scientific invention, clothing design, a moon landing… you get the picture), and propelled me towards a resolve so strong it captured me for itself.
A powerful refrain closes out the song. PK sings it so assuredly. Listening to it today, my resolve to carry on with my life’s work to end poverty in all its forms in this lifetime — a task at which we are failing miserably — remains intact. This refrain is an apt summary of “Common Man,” and all you ever need to remember if you don’t understand the Bemba lyrics. In July 2024, it was almost as if PK travelled forward in time three decades to put the exact closing words in the mouth of a man he would have never met, President Lula of Brazil:
“Hunger is the most degrading of all human deprivations.”
These words are an almost exact translation, or perhaps a haunting apparition. ◆
Categories
Friendship • Family • Coming of Age • Romance • Grief • Spirituality & Religion • Personal Development
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About Chilufya
Chilufya Chileshe, born and raised on a beautiful continent, is an avid crocheter and knitter who has spent two decades of her life working in civil society to end poverty and injustice. She writes free form poetry as a celebration of human diversity, a recounting of triumphs and tribulations in our tumultuous world, and an outlet for frustration with challenges to our humanity — when dignity is dishonoured, rights violated, and systems fail the people. Chilufya lives in Lusaka, Zambia, with her son.
Instagram @chilufia_affairs
⭐ Recommended by
Mwandwe Chileshe (No. 066)
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Wow… what a beautiful read, and what a song to pick!
Not surprising though, PK was a genius. This song still upsets those in political leadership, especially the Presidents, who are rhetoric. And it’s a joy to those fighting to step into leadership.
Did you know this song made PK lose his job? Courtesy of President Chiluba.
What a song… “You can increase the price for anything else but not food.
“If your country is poor and can’t afford food, it’s such an embarrassment.
Is insolo still there aii? Or taken over by phones
I love your essay. The depth, insight, parallels, and sentiment make me want to search out the lyrics, melody and rhythm to find and possibly (re-)experience the sense of your poetry.