Some songs are earworms. They get into your head and inhabit your brain, whether you want them to or not

That happened to me decades ago with a song that I never did hear in its entirety. It was by the Canadian band Refugee and the song is called “Sunrise in Zimbabwe.”

As I remember it Refugee was the first western rock band invited to perform in Zimbabwe during a modernization period in the mid 1980s. There were many issues, not the least being that the band didn’t get paid.

The Canadian TV crew recording the event left after a couple of weeks, and it was from their documentary I heard snippets of “Sunrise In Zimbabwe,” a song written by vocalist/keyboardist Myles Hunter on the trip and recorded locally. The song has been stuck in my head ever since, surfacing at the most unlikely times.

The government of Zimbabwe refused to let the band leave the country without playing a major stadium gig, but there was no local sound system capable of filling the venue. The promotor had no money, an the band was stuck in limbo.

Eventually the band managed to escape. Myles told me about a year later that they went to the airport, where officials from the Canadian High Commission bribed local officials with bottles of alcohol and the band left on three or four different flights, reuniting later in Canada.

As for the song, it became the theme song for Air Zimbabwe and was used extensively n their advertising. The band never received royalties.

A few weeks ago I stumbled across it online. After almost 40 years of waiting, I was delighted to finally hear the entire tune. There’s a cover version set to the original video that has also been posted online, but I prefer the original.

I hope you like it too.