Jay Fuse On The Experience

It’s not often on The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring Kaufela that we have a live performance, so on the latest edition we were delighted when Jay Fuse (pictured above) sang the lead single off his latest album live on the show. ‘The Experience’ is our weekly Sunday night radio show airing on Zambezi 107.7 fm, Livingstone’s leading local radio station, from 20.30-21.30 hrs and streaming on the internet. Jay also gave us a copy of his new CD to give away as a prize on the next show. We give a prize every week to the first person to text us telling us who’s singing our oldie of the week. On this show George chose ‘I Love You Daddy’ by Ricardo & Friends. Sneaky! No-one won, all the responders thought it was Michael Jackson!

Jay Fuse (real name Jay Phiri) is an up and coming Zambian musician, the lead single on his new CD is ‘Little Child’ – a touching track about the plight of orphans in Zambia. His album is titled ‘After Light’  and a jolly good listen it is too! It has nine tracks and is a mixture of English and vernacular. “Fused in fact” said Jay Fuse! “How did you get that name?” Milli Jam wanted to know and Jay explained that he gave himself the name because he loves to fuse his own feelings into his music. Jay is currently in cabaret at Chrismar Hotel in Livingstone and performs a three hour show every Friday and Saturday nights. “Gosh, you must need a huge repertoire!” We commented, and Jay agreed that he did need a lot of material to fill the time. He mixes covers with his own songs. More fusion!

Apart from Jay’s great live performance, George dropped the new ‘Zonefam’ single ‘Lobola’ featuring Shom C in the Zambian sector of the show. We opened proceedings with ‘Antenna’ by ODG featuring Wyclef Jean, a huge hit in UK. Milli Jam played ‘Carry You’ by Union J back to back with Beyonce’s ‘Rise Up’ as well as Naughty Boy with Sam Smith and their hit ‘La La La’. My pick of the week was Miley Cyrus’ ‘We Can’t Stop’.

Jay told listeners that he was single and not dating. “Calm down!” I urged the Chanters Girls listening back at the lodge, before doubting whether any musician anywhere could be single and not dating! He explained that he had been introduced to music by his late dad, a member of the very successful 80’s Lusaka band ‘Rising Stars’. He told us that he had been playing the guitar and singing for about 9 years. His own music preferences are oldies, South African tracks and ‘Kalindula’ (Zambian). His greatest influence in music in Zambia he listed as ‘Uncle Rex’.

Asked where he would like to be and what he would like to be doing in ten years’ time, this good looking, personable and talented young Zambian musician said that he would like still to be a musician going to more places and doing new and different things. We did not doubt his future success!

0