Street performers are fairly common around Antananarivo. But these boys are special – so special that some vazaha (white/foreign) musicians took the video and then added guitar and drums from their respective home studios.

The “Series” video is the other three videos played end-to-end.

« Prev 1 / 1 Next » Backing the Busking Boy Band – Series Backing the Busking Boy Band – 1 of 3 – Original Video Backing the Busking Boy Band – 2 of 3 – Plus Guitar and Drums Backing the Busking Boy Band – 3 of 3 – Plus Bass « Prev 1 / 1 Next »

The first remix (with drums and guitar) was shared on the Facebook page of LaChasse-info, a Madagascan news website.

It reminded me of when I added bass and electronic drums to “I’m Fat and Nobody Likes Me.” And certainly this “collaboration” demanded bass.

But in less than the time it takes me to do anything with music these days, another bass player stepped up and filled that vacuum.

Updates March 10, 2019:

I noticed that many people were only watching the original acapella video and thereby missing out on the additions from the musicians. So I added the “Series” video and put it first in the list.

I found out that these boys were dubbed “The Underground Boys of Tana” and they have a Facebook page and a YouTube channel—both of which appear to have been created by English-speaking foreigners.

Update Jan 27, 2020:

There was a story on CBS Sunday Morning about these boys, who are now going by the name Zaza Kanto

Disclaimer: I didn’t have anything to do with creating any of these videos; I merely compiled them into one place. The “original” video was a bit hard to track down. I eventually found it on a sketchy-looking site called Instahu, apparently one of many sites that scrapes other people’s content from Instagram. Thank you—and also Sorry—to original creator of this video.