The albino artist who seduced Madonna with his music is preparing a new album

When she met him on one of her visits to Malawi, where she develops different social projects, Madonna fell in love with his compositions, his banjo and his charisma.

“This is Lazarus, a great singer and musician and a powerful voice of a new generation in this country.

They will not silence him, even if he was born with albinism,” the American pop diva wrote in a post on her Instagram in 2018. She was referring to Lazarus Chigwandali, a guy who makes a living singing at the doors of Lilongwe shopping malls, the nation's capital.

“He was very interested in what I was doing and promised me that, in the future, we would collaborate.

But, in the new album that I want to start recording in September, I think she will not participate, ”says Chigwandali sitting on the sofa in his house,

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It is not easy at all to be born with albinism (a peculiarity that consists of a deficit in the production of melanin that translates into the total absence of any pigmentation in the hair, skin, eyes or all of them at the same time) in Malawi, a country located in southeastern Africa with just over 19 million inhabitants.

Here, the witch hunt, an all too common reality, finds its main victims and objects of desire in albinos because there are still people who claim they have magical properties.

From 2014 to 2019, the Association of People with Albinism in Malawi (APAM) collected chilling figures: at least 25 murders, 15 people arrested for being in possession of albino bones, 16 unsolved kidnapping cases,

Malawi is one of the countries with the most albinos in the world.

Estimates suggest that there are around 10,000 people with this condition

Malawi is one of the countries with the most albinos in the world.

Estimates suggest that there are around 10,000 people with this condition, -one for every 1,800 births, while in Spain the figure is between 3,000 and 4,000-.

Hence, Madonna's gesture took on such relevance.

Because Chigwandali is no longer one more.

There aren't many people in your country who can claim to have starred in a documentary directed by Oscar nominee David Harg and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Nor of having recorded an album under the auspices of music producer Johan Hugo, who has also worked with personalities such as the Senegalese Baaba Maal or the British folk rock group Mumford & Sons.

Nor of having shown her music in studios and on stages in New York.

As Chigwandali tells it, this all happened by chance.

“Once, singing in the City Mall – a shopping center in the Malawian capital and a fixed place on her work route – a tourist named Jessica recorded a video of a song of mine and uploaded it to the internet.

Johan Hugo saw it in London, contacted me and came with this director from America.

Thanks to that we recorded my first album, with 12 songs, we made the movie and I was able to go to New York”, she affirms.

The artist remembers that trip with extreme affection.

"I had a lot of Fun!

Learning about other cultures, premiering the documentary, the number of businesses I saw there, Times Square… It's all so different from what I usually see here!” he says.

And, looking at the statistics, his astonishment is more than justified.

The United Nations estimates that Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world.

Gospel against prejudice

“I started singing with my older brother.

He was called Petro.

He was also an albino and he was the one who taught me how to make my own instruments,” recalls Chigwandali.

Because, although he has a Spanish guitar that he plays with skill, what he feels most comfortable with is his homemade banjo, made from an old oil can, wood and strings, and with some soda caps that he ties his feet to. maracas mode.

He makes them sound by hitting them with a cajon, also made by hand.

He relies on them to write his songs, gospel-style, with a strong religious background.

The clearest example is the single from his first album,

, which in Chichewa, the mother tongue of Chigwandali and the most widely spoken in Malawi, means “we are visitors”.

“We are here just passing through, for a very short time.

In this song I wanted to put people on notice of that,” she explains.

“Petro died of skin cancer when I was very young.

The sun is a very bad and powerful enemy for us,” says Chigwandali.

That's why it's hard to see him without dark glasses, a hat and long-sleeved pants and shirt, although the heat is almost suffocating.

That's why there is never a lack of sun cream in his house.

“But it is not the only problem;

people like me have more difficulty finding work.

And, of course, we suffer persecution.

You have to be very careful,” she explains.

And he resorts to an experience lived by him in the first person to illustrate his testimony.

“Once, while she was singing in a shopping center, a woman told me that she was doing very well and that her husband would help me record my songs.

So I got into her car with her, she took me to a house and told me to wait outside.

But being there

A worker from that place told me that she had heard that woman say that she wanted to sell me in Tanzania.

I ran to the police and they arrested her, ”she says.

Malawi is not the only country in this geographical area where people with albinism feel unsafe.

In fact, in neighboring Tanzania and Mozambique the situation is not much more hopeful.

The examples are diverse and numerous.

Many Tanzanians call their albino countrymen

(ghosts) and in recent years mercenaries have proliferated who murder them to traffic in their body parts.

In the Mozambican nation, more of the same: a single albino bone can be worth up to 1,000 euros and the United Nations stated in 2016 that a complete set can reach 60,000 euros.

In both cases, the younger the victim's age, the higher the emoluments.

Lazarus Chigwandali is not only afraid for him.

“Of the three children I have, the oldest and the middle one are also albinos.

I am afraid that one day, when they come home from school or when they go out to play in the street, something bad might happen to them,” he says.

At the moment, he continues, he is teaching them to play that banjo and sing those songs with which he makes his living walking the streets of Lilongwe, offering his music to people who come to buy supermarkets.

“I want them to study and learn English.

It will be better for them if in the future they decide to enter this industry as I have done,” he says.

And he ends: “Since I recorded the first album with Johan and I met Madonna, my life has changed a lot.

They helped me buy a new, bigger, safer house, and my songs have been played in a lot of cities.

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