The African Roots of Cuban Music,The Music of the Nyayo Era,Kenyans' Elusive Search for a Cultural Identity,How Afrobeat(S)

The African Roots of Cuban Music

By Boima Tucker

British sociologist Paul Gilroy suggested the history of culture in the Atlantic world is characterized by constant exchange. One of the most traceable elements of that exchange, is the musical connections between communities of African descent on either side of the ocean. These musical practices operate as sites of resistance, cultural retention, and social cohesion that allow us to understand some of the ways we all are formed by trans-continental processes.

During the dawn of recorded music in the early part of the 20th century, Cuba—one of many New World sites of African and indigenous resistance to European colonisation and enslavement—would become a hotbed for musical export in the emerging industrialized system of music distribution. Folk musical traditions from across the island would come together in Havana’s studios, and then get dispersed around the entire Atlantic world. In the early part of the 20th Century, Cuban musical styles like son, mambo and guaguanco followed migrants and sailors out across the Atlantic, hitting radio waves in the ports of landing, and spreading throughout the interior of the countries they landed in.

With its strong traces of West and Central African rhythms, this music would find legions of devoted followers on the African continent. Local artists would try their hand at recreating the sound, and start to mix elements of their own local traditions creating what we now know as Congolese rumba, soukous, mbalax, semba, kizomba, and highlife, etc. These styles, amongst many others on the continent, would go on to form the backbone of national identity in the post-independence period, their propagation supported with enthusiasm by the leaders of the new nations. They are also the ancestors of many popular music sounds on the continent today.

Kiki on Conga. Image credit Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi.

While Cuba had technically been independent for at least a half century before sub-Saharan African nations, one could argue that Cubans found their true independence in conjunction with their peers on the continent. The Cuban Revolution in 1959 shook off the final shackles of American empire and posed a challenge to the hemispheric dominance of US imperial capitalism. In the Cold War propaganda machine, Cuba would go on to become the western hemisphere antithesis to everything its larger and more powerful neighbor to the north stood for.

After the Revolution, Cuban cultural production would become cut off from capitalist networks of trade, though the nation would retain some influence in the Caribbean and South America (despite US attempts to prevent it). In Africa, countries like Angola would strengthen their ties with Cuba during the Cold War, but the outsize cultural influence that Cuba held in the Atlantic world, pre- revolution, would leave a void that would quickly be filled by Jamaica, Brazil, and the Cuban and Puerto Rican diasporas in the US. Cuba itself would turn more inward, its cultural production burdened by the heavy weight of nostalgia and nation building—European, indigenous, and African roots fighting it out in a perennial dance on top of the ruins of the Spanish empire. Youth of Chicharones. Image credit Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi.

The beauty in black Atlantic cultural formation is in the continual exchange of information that persists between peoples of African descent across language, national borders, and even time. This “counter-culture” of western modernity utilises and navigates systems that were designed to exploit and repress the communities from which it came. So naturally, on the back of western capitalism, African popular music influenced by Cuba would repeat the process initiated in the early 20th Century, finding receptive audiences back on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean. In places like Santo Domingo, Port au Prince, Cartagena and Baranquilla, the process of acculturation and hybridiation would repeat, and Africa would have its turn to make its mark on the popular musics of the Caribbean in the latter part of the century.

While Cuba had technically been independent for at least a half century before sub- Saharan African nations, one could argue that Cubans found their true independence in conjunction with their peers on the continent

It would take until more recently, in the wake of political and cultural revolutions driven by youth on the African continent, and a global revolution in communication technology for similar processes to happen in Cuba. And that’s where Puerto Rican brothers Eli and Khalil Jacobs-Fantauzzi’s latest documentary Bakosó: Afrobeats in Cuba picks up.

The opening scene in the film shows Havana-based DJ Jigüe tuning into a radio interview with an artist named Ozkaro to hear that “something” is happening 700 km away in his home province of Santiago. A new musical genre, bakosó, was developing, and local artists such as Ozkaro were blending Afro-Cuban folk and popular music with contemporary continental genres like afrobeats, afrohouse, and kuduro. There are huge parties with hundreds, maybe thousands of fans in a public square, new dance styles and crews, and the city’s existing set of rappers and reggaetoneros are enthusiastically taking to the genre. DJ Jigüe. Image credit Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi.

Jigüe decides that he needs to go back home after being disconnected and see what is going on in Santiago. This personal journey home, to a place of roots, serves as a metaphor in the film itself, for bakosó’s origin story, and for Cuban’s engagement with African culture in general. This, along with other devices employed by the directors, such as the folkloric dance performance that bookends the film, create a form-defying, yet accessible introduction to Cuba’s cultural landscape.

Once in Santiago, we travel with Jigüe to meet Ozkaro in his home studio where they discuss the difficulties in being an artist in Santiago: the lack of technology with which to produce and the challenge of being distant (or rather disconnected) from Havana where the largest media houses are. The absence of such hurdles is taken for granted in the global North. In the production of the current mainstream global pop sound, access to state of the art technology is a necessary prerequisite. Even with these limitations, Cubans have no problem accessing sounds from Africa. That’s because contemporary African genres arrived in Cuba from a surprising source: medical students from Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, South Africa, and across the continent. Some bakosó producers offer explanations as to why they think the African students’ music has been taken up with enthusiasm by the public in Santiago. Reasons dance around the idea of African retentions, sometimes slipping into essentialist tropes common across Latin America like, “Santiageras have a certain sexuality.” But, it’s Ozkaro who provides one of the most profound insights when he explains the importance of the clave rhythm to the Cuban public. His insight is interesting because it is an electronically programmed clave that has become the most pronounced element across many African popular music genres, and was one of the main rhythms that African audiences had originally connected with when Cuban music reached their shores.

The film moves on from there to explore more of the African retentions embedded in Santiagero culture, and explains the conditions that birthed a strong African consciousness in this part of the island. In a scene where the group Conexión Africa is recording a song called “Africa” with an Angolan football club’s banner on the wall of the booth, one can tangibly feel such African consciousness manifesting. Bakosó party. Image credit Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi.

While this celebration of Africa in Cuba is inspirational, the film is a bit overburdened by the weight given to the personal allegory of a return to African roots (and subsequent journey out to share them with the world). Beyond just a connection to roots, it must be understood that the birth of this new musical genre was assisted by Cuba’s state foreign policy of building global South solidarity, and aiding the African liberation movements. The film lightly touches on this. For example, Jigüe mentions the history of Cuban military support for Angola, and how this action is thought upon fondly by many of the Angolan students who arrive to Cuba. The film, however, would have benefited from more of this political context to balance out Jigüe’s romanticism.

One section, if expanded on, would have gone a long way to rectify this issue, and that was the story of how a nationwide Africa Day celebration came to be in Cuba. Nayda Gordon, the founder of a youth African dance troupe, Sangre Nueva, explains how years ago African students would only practice their cultures with each other in parties and celebrations behind the closed doors of the medical schools. The cultures of these students piqued her interest, so she reached out to a medical student named Demba and together they organized to form the troupe. A former African medical student, Dr. Ibrahim Keita, mentions Demba and a committee that was formed ten years ago with the aim of integrating African students more with the local community. Keita alludes to the fact that this committee helped bring about the Africa Day festivities and claims, “if Kuduro is being accepted by Cuban youth today, it’s because that was our intention.” Santiago, Cuba. Image credit Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi.

Gordon’s personal motivation to connect with strangers is fascinating. It would be interesting to contextualize her initiative in relation to Cuban social norms and find out why it was important for her to connect Cuban youth with African culture. Also, the modes available for building programs of integration through grassroots solidarity in Cuba are unfamiliar to me, and in the film this section passes very quickly. It left me wondering: What was the committee? Who all was involved? And, how did they managed to gain state support? An international audience especially would have benefited from further exploration of these questions.

After the Revolution, Cuban cultural production would become cut off from capitalist networks of trade, though the nation would retain some influence in the Caribbean and South America (despite US attempts to prevent it).

Jigüe mentions over and over that this or that could happen “only in Santiago.” This perhaps works best in a local context amidst a continued struggle with racial inequality on the island, but not so much outside of Cuba. Because, rather than exceptional, the formation of a genre like bakosó, and the conditions that allowed it, is a process that I have personally seen repeated over and over across the Atlantic world (admittedly thanks to a little passport privilege and a fast internet connection). Kuduro, afrobeats, and afrohouse themselves are a result of such processes, and this is not the first time director Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi has been there for such moments. He previously documented the growth of hip hop in Cuba with his film Inventos: Hip Hop Cubano and the rise of hiplife in Ghana in Homegrown: Hiplife in Ghana.

What is exceptional about Santiago that makes it stand out amongst its hemispheric neighbors are the social conditions that allowed this exchange to happen. In contrast to North America—where corporate streaming platforms and an “Africans! They’re just like us” narrative are propelling Afropop into the mainstream—in Cuba a state policy of global South solidarity, has merged with an African consciousness embedded amongst the people. This political formation is what opened pathways for integration between Cubans and their African immigrant neighbors. Paradoxically, at a time when much of us are hyper-connected, in the face of digital disconnection, Cubans were able to connect with Africa via Africans themselves. So, bakosó remains as a unique cultural space in a world where cultural difference seems to be melting away—it is wonderful, simply, because it is still a story of a specific place, and a sound for a specific people, at a specific moment in time.

Still, what may be most exciting for audiences in regards to both the film and the music itself is that they allow us to romanticize the potentials and possibilities they symbolize. Bakosó, as a gift to Cuba from the African nations that were touched by Cuba’s influence, being sent back to the island that helped define what it means to be African in the modern world. With beautiful cinematography, and an innovative take on the documentary genre, the Jacobs-Fantauzzi brothers have done a great job in documenting this exchange on another leg of its journey.

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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.

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The African Roots of Cuban Music

By Boima Tucker This week marks the first anniversary since the death of the second president of Kenya, Daniel Torotich Arap Moi. Indeed, much has been written and said about Daniel arap Moi, and his death uncorked a litany of previously hidden details and insights into the Shakespearian drama he presided over while in office.

But how do we evaluate the legacy of Moi’s agency during his time in office?

Is it through the memoirs that will and have been written, the popular slogans that were created by his regime and sang by his supporters or is it the “official” narrative peddled by the state? Or is it, perhaps, the pain his detractors and critics faced or the scars of the victims who suffered his heavy hand?

Popular music reflects the culture of our day. Through it, we can observe the blueprint of an age in the lyrics and sound of that time.

Perhaps, we argue, that if we listen to the popular music of Moi’s twenty four year rule can we observe the fingerprint and maybe get a glimpse of the Man and his legacy.

The following is a chronological account of the sounds and hits that defined the twenty four year rule of Daniel Torotich Arap Moi.

1978: The Kenya scene is just coming off of Daudi Kabaka’s African Twist. But we must start with that style Msichana wa Elimu, a song that advises about marriage. Daudi Kabaka was born in 1939 and died in 2001, was a popular Kenyan vocalist, known by his fans as the undisputed King of twist. Jomo Kenyatta died on August 27th of 1978 and President Daniel Torotich took over as the second president of Kenya.

1979: Nico Mbarga has taken over Africa with Sweet Mother. Locally Slim Ali and The Hodi Boys Band are all the rave, playing in hotel lounges and clubs across the Middle East and North Africa and ended up in Kenya Slim Ali is from Mombasa. Here, President Moi is still loved and respected by many people. He enjoys popular support from the people. A pull-out from the Nation describes him as a humble and accessible president.

1980: Fadhili Williams re-releases Malaika. The song was first recorded by a Tanzanian musician Adam Salim in 1945. Fadhili was born in Taita Taveta in 1938 and died in 2001.

1981: Maroon Commandos and Habel Kifoto produce Charonyi Ni Wasi.

1982: The August 1st coup, a failed attempt to overthrow President Daniel Arap Moi’s government so musicians are under pressure to release unity and praise songs. The biggest hits come from Jambo Bwana by Them Mushrooms which was featured in Cheetah, a Disney film that had the phrase Hakuna Matata which became very popular when Disney released The Lion King later.

1983: Safari Sounds Band releases are recorded That’s Certified Gold. Among the biggest hits were Mama lea mtoto wangu.

1984: Moi has banned Congolese music. But he changes his mind after the release of Mbilia Bel – Nakei Naïrobi (“El Alambre”).

1985: By now the Nairobi live scene has suffered because of the effects of the 1982 coup and Moi’s informal censorship. The dark days of the Nyayo era at a crescendo. Detention without trial of many political prisoners and others flee the country at risk of facing the heavy hand of the regime. Still, a rebirth happens in the music scene led by Sal Davis and The Establishment The music isn’t politically conscious however.

1986: The many detentions of the Nyayo era has also killed the vernacular live scene. State operatives at the time saw these spaces as points of political mobilisation, but Joseph Kamaru leads a little uprising popularising Kikuyu vernacular hits.

1987: D.O Misiani and Orch come to the scene. And Shirati Band releases some seditious tracks among them Safari Ya Musoma.

1988: Mombasa Roots Band arrived on the scene with Disco Chakacha – originally released in 1986.

1989: Ten years after it was founded Muungano Choir finally created a pop smash hit Safari Ya Bamba. The following year they released Missa Luba recorded in Germany after the Berlin wall came down, ending the cold war era and the triumphant of liberal democracy.

1990: Les Wanyika released an earthshaking album. One of the biggest hits was Sina Makosa

1991: Albert Gacheru makes his way through Kikuyu Pop music. His biggest hit Mariru – Kikuyu Mugithi Songs 1992: JB Maina releases Mwanake. And Japheth Kassanga, Mary Wambui, Helen Akoth and Mary Atieno are redefining gospel music with the shows Joy Bringers and Sing and Shine.

1993: Diversification happens in Kenya’s music industry. Many acts like Sheila Tett, Musically Speaking – later Zanaziki and a boy band called 5 Alive change the music scene. Among the many tracks released by Zanaziki is a popular hit. Also, Okatch Biggy and not to forget Princess Julie who create the soundtrack to the Moi government response to HIV in Kenya Dunia Mbaya.

Mid-90s: Urban Music is now bigger than was ever expected. Another boy band Swahili Nation Mpenzi makes their way into the music scene. The opening up of Kenya’s democratic space after the repeal of section 2a in 1991, the import of American culture and growth of local media outlets drastically shifted Kenya’s music scene.

Ted Josiah brings out a guy called Hardstone – Uhiki who is loved by the growing young urban population.

Jimmi Gathu and others organise for a musician called Eric Wainaina to do the first version of a new national anthem dubbed Kenya Only

Shadez O Black are challenging Hardstone for the artiste of the year award with this smash hit: Serengeti Groove.

Still in the mid 90s there’s a cultural earthquake that changed the music scene in Kenya. Kalamashaka’s hit –Tafsiri Hii. A culmination of poor governance by the Nyayo era, the structural adjustment programs of the 80’s and 90’s and new young urban generation raised by a staple of America’s hip hop culture and Nairobi’s budding urban culture produces a socially and politically conscious movement of artists who go by the moniker Ukoo fulani.

Eric Wainaina later drops Nchi ya Kitu kidogo. The song that Moi’s government truly hated.

2000s: The music scene expands dramatically and is ungovernable A growing sign that the years of Moi were coming to an end and that he could not hold on any longer to power. Ogopa Deejays arrive in the music scene. The biggest song of those first two years, the soundtrack to the Exit if Moi. All the way from Okok Primary school Gidigidi Majimaji – Unbwogable. This song was used as a slogan by the coalition government that removed Moi from power.

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By Boima Tucker

Sometime back, Kenya was presented with several designs of what was envisaged as the “national dress”. A team of eminent persons in the culture scene had been tasked by the Ministry of Culture to search, identify and come up with designs that would help us finally resolve the longstanding issue of “What is a Kenyan national dress?” This debate was not happening in isolation; it was replicated in many other art genres in Kenya, such as the culinary arts (What is the national dish?) but it was particularly prominent in the music scene.

Artists and experts continue to dialogue on whether we have what can be described as a truly Kenyan beat. Is it benga? Is it kapuka? Or do we stick with the beats that have come to be identified with our communities like omutibo in Western Kenya, mwomboko amongst the Gikuyu, sengenya, bango and chakacha at the Coast?

Do we have a beat (read music), such as mbalax from Senegal, kwaito or kwela from South Africa, juju music from several countries in West Africa, or rhumba from the Democratic Republic of Congo, that if heard out there could rightly be claim to be from Kenya? Do we need a beat that gives the country a distinct musical identity? Is this the same in other countries like Senegal, DRC, South Africa, Tanzania and globally? In Senegal, mbalax is identified with Wolof in the same way that Lingala and Kiswahili are identified with the DRC and Tanzania, respectively. However, would singing in Kiswahili or in any other Kenyan language give the country a distinct beat? Most experts argue and agree that it takes more than language to give music a national identity. It takes more than just singing in Kiswahili, Dholuo, Gikuyu or Sheng.

Some industry players argue that Kenya has indeed achieved a similar feat with benga and that benga is not confined to Kenya alone; it has been exported to other African countries, notably Zambia and Zimbabwe. Shades of Benga, a book detailing the origin and growth of benga, makes a case for this beat as a truly Kenyan musical sound that has also had an impact beyond Kenya. Benga aficionados argue that this is the most distinctive sound to have come out of Kenya’s 70 years of creating urban guitar music.

In Senegal, mbalax is identified with Wolof in the same way that Lingala and Kiswahili are identified with the DRC and Tanzania, respectively. However, would singing in Kiswahili or in any other Kenyan language give the country a distinct beat?

“It may still not be considered an upmarket genre, but it has managed to establish its hold as a definite Kenyan style and beat,” the experts at Ketebul Studios, who put together a booklet, an audio CD and documentary DVD dubbed Retracing the Benga Rhythm note. “Sprinklings of it are to be found as far south as Zimbabwe and it has been borrowed, repackaged and offered in big-name music countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon. From its humble rural beginnings, this music has been nurtured into a club circuit affair in numerous urban areas in East, Central and Southern Africa.”

Identity struggles beyond the arts

The musical discourse is not about to wane and the success or failure of the national dress experiment is still up for debate. However, this search, whether in the music scene, fashion, film or even the culinary arts, is without a doubt one of the clearest illustrations of our collective struggle with the complex issue of identity that also manifests itself in every other aspect of our national psyche in the political, economic, social and cultural spheres.

When we gained independence in 1963, the constitution prescribed a Westminster-model where the governor and the prime minister had their roles spelt out. However, immediately after independence, the KANU political elite sought to dismantle the independence constitution in order to implement a theory of a singular executive authority vested with the presidency. The elite wanted something akin to the American presidency but they fell short because they did not put in place other stronger institutions that would provide the necessary checks and balances. This resulted in a political struggle that culminated in a new constitution that is now faced with reverberations from this past era.

Eighteen months after Kenya attained independence, the government of the late Mzee Jomo Kenyatta published the African Socialism Sessional Paper No 10 that contained the basic tenets of what the founding fathers termed as the concepts and philosophy of a Democratic African Socialism that would guide their future planning. “We rejected both Western Capitalism and Eastern Communism and chose for ourselves a policy of positive non-alignment,” Jomo Kenyatta wrote in his opening remarks.

However, just like in politics, the economic blueprint was strong in rhetoric but failed miserably in its implementation. We gravitated towards Western capitalism and even became very hostile to countries and neighbours like Tanzania that had adopted socialism through Ujamaa. Alexander Chagema, in an article aptly titled “Kenya, the Epitome of the Capitalist State”, described the country as “the epitome of the capitalist system of governance”.

David Himbara pointed out the same in his article “Myths and Realities of Kenyan Capitalism”. Other writers and experts have written about this dual existence. They all demonstrate how we have been struggling with economic identity. The political and economic identity struggles and the resultant machinations are reflected in the tussle on whether to support the nation or “my community”.

This struggle is often exhibited during elections when the political elite whip up ethnic emotions over national issues as they seek political office that is often associated with the economic rewards they are bound to reap or protect.

“The marriage of ethnicities in Kenya was arranged by the colonialists,” noted Prof. Kimani Njogu, a former Professor of African Languages at Kenyatta University and director of Twaweza. “During the struggle for independence, a spirit of nationalism was ignited, but this vision was not pursued by the new leadership. Instead, ethnic affiliations have been stimulated and perpetuated by the political elite to acquire or maintain power. Ethnic cleavages continue to undermine national consciousness, often over competition for resources and access to political power. They undermine Kenyan nationhood.”

Ethnic affiliations have not only played out during elections and campaigns; the linguistic connections and differences are also a great indicator of the identity struggles that we experience. Broadly, noted Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi in Linguistic Realities in Kenya: A Preliminary Survey, “There are three language groups in Kenya, namely Bantu which includes Kiswahili, Gikuyu, EkeGusii, Luhya and Kamba; examples of Nilotic languages are Kalenjin, Luo, Turkana and Maasai, and Cushitic includes Rendile, Somali Borana and Gabra. Each group includes more than five dialects, which makes Kenya a multilingual country with nearly over forty-two languages.”

Ethnic affiliations have not only played out during elections and campaigns; the linguistic connections and differences are also a great indicator of the identity struggles that we experience.

The languages have been recognised by the Constitution of Kenya 2010. Besides these languages, the constitution also made Kiswahili the national and official language of Kenya. English, a colonial legacy, has been recognised as an official language. However, this has not helped to stop the wrangles on identity and recognition that have persisted between Kiswahili and English, given the historical context they stem from.

“The colonial language policy in Kenya is important putting into consideration that it impacted greatly on post-colonial language policy,” notes Dr Wendo Nabea, a lecturer in linguistics and the Director of Laikipia University, Naivasha Campus, in his seminal article “Language Policy in Kenya: Negotiation with Hegemony”. The article states:

Contrary to the long-held postulation that it was the objective of the colonial government to promote English language in the colony, the colonial language policy was always inchoate and vacillating such that there were occasions that measures were put in place to promote or deter its learning. However, such denial inadvertently provided a stimulus for Kenyans to learn English considering that they had already taken cognizant of the fact that it was the launching pad for white collar jobs. This can be said to have been the genesis of English’s hegemonic and divisionary tendencies, between the elite (those who could use it) and the masses (those who could not use it).

Identity struggles within culture and the arts

Political and socio-economic identity struggles in Kenya are taking place with such intensity because our cultural identity has also not been addressed. Observers note that we fought for political and economic emancipation, and while we might have scored some victory on these fronts, we did not sufficiently consolidate it through a well thought-out cultural policy that took note of our diversity and grounded our aspirations on the strengths that these diversities presented. We defined ourselves clearly as Africans when we wedged the political war through fronts such as the Mau Mau but failed to develop similar clear identities when it came to our culture that would be explicitly defined through our artistic impressions and expressions.

Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms, notes:

For a full comprehension of the dynamics, dimensions and workings of a society, any society, the cultural aspects cannot be seen in total isolation from the economic and political ones. The quantity and quality of wealth in a community, the manner of its organisation from production to the sharing out affect, and are affected by the way in which power is organised and distributed. These in turn affect and are affected by the values of that society as embodied and expressed in the culture of that society…the wealth and power and self-image of a community are inseparable…culture gives that society its self-image as it sorts itself out in the economic and political fields.

The first cultural policy for Kenya was launched in 2009 – 46 years after the country had attained her independence. Before it could even be implemented, the country gave itself a new constitution a year later and that necessitated a further review of the cultural policy to align it to the new constitution. There was an intensive process to align the policy to the constitution but the subsequent document has never seen the light of day. The country went back to its default mode of trying to define itself and realising matters to do with culture and producing artistic expression and impressions without grounding these on an official policy.

There is no doubt that culture and cultural identity are at the centre of the quest to resolve identity issues in Kenya’s arts scene. This quest certainly includes our continued obsession with a national dress. It also includes a desire to identify a beat that can be called truly Kenyan.

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By Boima Tucker

There was initially a slight conflation between the Afrobeat genre and its later reincarnation as Afrobeats. Recently however, there has been a demarcation between the two genres even though they share certain antecedents of lineage.

Fela Kuti—visionary composer, multi-instrumentalist, radical social activist, cultural renegade, political prisoner and pan-Africanist amongst other things—is regarded as the foremost exponent of Afrobeat and his life and work have been amply documented. Kuti’s brand of Afrobeat emerged after years of experimentation during which he lived in London as a student in the 1950s and 60s and then in Los Angeles in the late 60s. Kuti had studied classical music in England where he also spent time moonlighting in jazz clubs. Jazz, and not classical music, had been his first love. On completing his studies, Kuti returned to Nigeria where he had a stint in broadcasting before going into a full- time career in music.

At the time, West African highlife music was all the rave. Highlife is reputed to have been pioneered by E.T. Mensah, a Ghanaian exponent, but the genre soon gained widespread acceptance all over the West African coast. It was an intoxicating blend of Latin sounds and African polyrhythms served with bluesy horns. Essentially, it was feel-good music with little or no overt political content. It certainly didn’t need to be politically conscious because many African countries were still in a euphoric mood after recently gaining independence from their erstwhile colonisers.

For a while, Kuti dabbled in what he termed highlife-jazz. And then at the end of the 60s, he visited the United States on a musical tour. On getting there, he discovered that he and his band hadn’t obtained the correct visas that would permit them to work. In Los Angeles, he met Sandra Izidore, a young and beautiful African American woman who would change his life. A student of anthropology, Izidore was also a radical pro-black activist who turned Kuti to the ideology of the Black Panther Party. The civil rights movement had gained tremendous momentum, with black leaders calling for urgent sociopolitical change. Such transformation also meant cultural assertion and empowerment as exemplified by James Brown’s radical cry, “Say it loud, I’m black and proud”. Brown in turn preached his searing political message through a diet of gut-bucket funk. Funk was unapologetically black at its core; the kind of music that in earlier times would be classified as race music. Basically a groove-based music, its energetic, funky drum patterns and heavy bass lines distinguished it as a form that spoke directly to the gut and soul.

Meanwhile, Kuti was taking copious notes on everything, from the strident political messaging to the indispensability of the groove coupled with the hypnotic and electrifying effects of gut-deep funk. There was clearly a lot to be learnt from a culturally resurgent black America.

Although Kuti deeply admired jazz, he still felt it lacked something. In particular, he believed that more obvious elements of African music needed to be added into the mix. These ingredients included powerful ancient West African drumming traditions. Within those illustrious percussive traditions, drummers had discovered a way to make drums “talk” in honouring their deities and forging stronger communal ties.

Kuti promptly set about incorporating those vital elements of West African music into his ever- expanding repertoire. Apart from his own indigenous Yoruba drumming, these elements included Ghanaian styles, highlife textures, jazzy horns and deep funk grooves. He also learnt about the power of African trance music and its innate spirituality. Having selected these assorted sonic elements, Kuti turned to questions of ideology and political message; it was an unlikely combination of ingredients funnelled through a highly idiosyncratic imagination.

Izidore had preached the necessity to develop a clear political vision. In America, political struggle was defined by the imperatives of black empowerment and the language of civil rights. Back in Nigeria, as the euphoric haze of independence wore off, Kuti was confronted by enervating postcolonial anomie. The ruling classes, both civilian and military, had become insufferably corrupt. Instead of real national development, Kuti saw missed opportunities and truncated potential which infuriated him. He started to lambast the decadent ruling classes and soon incurred their wrath. He was constantly harassed, arrested and beaten by military goons.

But Kuti had found a powerfully distinctive musical voice and an equally impressive political message to sit within it. Fastened together, his sonic template and ideological vision became a formidable weapon that attempted several things all at once: sociopolitical transformation, cultural and aesthetic affirmation, spiritual re-discovery and individual liberation.

Kuti came to be viewed as a disconcerting maverick, an irrepressible icon who spoke fearlessly for the disenfranchised masses, a gadfly who constantly taunted and angered the political and economic elites, and finally, a social rebel who championed the causes of countercultural renegades. He blithely broke all the rules, politically, culturally and musically. And within this restless cauldron of rebellion and experimentation, classical Afrobeat was born, with Kuti as its instantly recognisable face. However, there were other musicians, such as Orlando Julius and Remi Kababa, who also favoured the genre.

Within Kuti’s large and revolving band, many musicians are credited with having played pivotal roles in forging Afrobeat’s sonic identity. In this regard, mention must be made of drummer Tony Allen’s contributions in laying down the percussive basis of the Afrobeat sound. Although Kuti was the visionary mastermind who assembled all the elements together, he was generous enough to acknowledge Allen’s vital inputs. Incidentally, Allen died in Paris during the COVID-19 pandemic at the age of 79. Another crucial figure in the Afrobeat story is baritone saxophonist Lekan Animashaun who succeeded Allen as band leader when the latter left in 1979 not long after the sacking and razing of Kalakuta Republic, Kuti’s countercultural commune, in 1977. The following year, Olufunmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Kuti’s mother and foremost feminist, who had been flung from an upstairs window during the raid on Kalakuta, died aged 78 as a result of her injuries.

Kuti himself was never the same after this ordeal. He gradually became understandably paranoid, distrustful of even his own well-meaning close friends and associates and increasingly reclusive. His oppression at the hands of the military authorities continued and a change in his sonic template became noticeable. For one, the joie de vivre evident in his earlier compositions rapidly gave way to a sombre, meditative tone which aligned with the spiritual turn of mind that came to inform his general outlook.

Kuti died in 1997 during the reign of Nigeria’s most heinous dictator, General Sani Abacha, who himself met his demise the following year. But even before his death, Kuti had been long past his prime, weakened by numerous beatings inflicted by an unforgiving military and HIV/Aids. Sadly, he died a bitter and broken man although ultimately, he had the last laugh. Afrobeat, the genre he pioneered and disseminated against all odds eventually became an attractive idiom, finding proponents all over the world. As this came to pass, his cultural stock increased in value exponentially.

Nollywood, the rough, innovative and adaptable movie industry hatched in the midst of a pulverising economic meltdown and severe sociocultural upheavals soon grew to international prominence on the strength of its DIY ethic. After Kuti’s passing, it was yet another cultural phenomenon that, in spite of all odds, attested to the region’s cultural vibrancy and resourcefulness. It can be argued that the confidence acquired by Nollywood somehow translated to other distinct yet related cultural pursuits such as music. In other words, the same DIY spirit that had birthed Nollywood eventually produced Afrobeats.

Afrobeats, as distinct from Afrobeat, is less political, arguably less musically accomplished or sophisticated and evidently less aesthetically ambitious. Today’s Afrobeats musicians work in a vastly different technological era in which they don’t need to learn to play and master what are considered to be traditional musical instruments. All they need is an adept beatmaker.

However, Kuti’s Afrobeat is an almost impossible proposition in the current economic environment because he often needed what would appear to be orchestras within orchestras to produce his intricate, lavishly textured sound and hence realise his singularly unique musical vision. Technically, this is very difficult to accomplish presently as the sheer logistics required to achieve this kind of feat are simply mind-boggling.

Kuti also believed strongly in the spiritual dimensions of African music; music was, in other words, an avenue to access ancestral life-worlds and establish historical continuity devoid of the frivolities of the present. In addition, there is also a striving to affirm and express the ineffable. Again, this refers to the spiritual component of classical Afrobeat.

Wizkid, Davido and Burna Boy are regarded as the current superstars of the Afrobeats scene. And in several ways, they are all very different. Wizkid, one of the first breakout Afrobeats stars, has a distinctively mellow voice and is very skilled at ad libs and groove-laden free-styles. Lyrically and politically, there is very little content to his music except that he is often able to deliver feel-good tunes that fill the dance floors. In fairness to him, he does not pretend to be a political messiah or to possess a vision of how society ought to be reformed. He has also become part of the global entertainment industry which readily accepts and promotes stars that lend themselves to easy and unproblematic branding.

The same can be said of Davido, Wizkid’s compatriot and frequent rival, who hit the limelight about the same time as the latter. Davido’s voice isn’t as charming but he makes up for it with an equally astute understanding of the groove and indigenous African rhythms. Other advantages that serve him well are his relentless energy and cannily precise understanding of his strengths and limitations as a musician.

Burna Boy, his multiple successes notwithstanding, is a slightly more demanding figure. Of the three major Afrobeats stars, he draws more directly from Kuti’s immense artistic legacy. He has sampled so many of Kuti’s compositions that detractors began to question his originality. Incidentally, Burna’s grandfather, Benson Idonije, legendary jazz aficionado and broadcaster, had been Kuti’s manager in the 60s. So Burna comes from an artistic and ideological pedigree that can be traced right back to Kuti. His most recent musical offering entitled Twice as Tall comes barely a year after the Grammy-nominated and BET award-winning album, African Giant.

Burna has consistently attempted to infuse socially conscious lyrics in his music, an obvious connection to Kuti’s aesthetic. Interestingly, his mother, Bose Ogulu, is a producer of his latest album along with US luminaries P Diddy and Timberland. His sister works on his label as artistic director. Ensuring that his family participates in his artistic journey also chimes with Kuti’s understanding of the communal nature of music. However, being transformed into an unproblematic global star entails a more discreet packaging of his overt political agenda. If Burna gets too strident about his political message, sponsors and brands may balk at promoting him.

At the same time, there is clearly an inclination to present himself as a credible artist and not just a dance floor-filling flavour-of-the-month singer. It would be interesting to see how the contradictions between being a true artist and being merely an entertainer in the current music business climate play out. It is a bit early to predict how Burna intends to confront this dilemma as he tries to portray himself as an artist cut from the Kuti cloth while also having an eye on gorgeous video vixens who could make his visuals more interesting. His growing political awakening has to contend with the very real limitations within the music industry and the realities of becoming a veritable global icon.

Meanwhile, performers from all over the world continue to hop onto the Afrobeats wagon, from Beyonce, Drake, Chris Brown, H.E.R., Stormzy, Summer Walker, Wale, Jorja Smith, Sam Smith, Pop Smoke, Teyana Taylor to Afro B and many other globally acclaimed stars. And the morphology of Afrobeats has begun to reflect this astonishing diversity in terms of sound, presentation and potential.

Unlike Nollywood, Afrobeat(s) generally have had greater success as African cultural exports. In his heyday, Kuti almost immediately won over influential fans like the famed jazz pianist Randy Weston, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Ginger Baker, Gilberto Gil, Roy Ayers, Hugh Masekela and many other major industry players. There are Afrobeat combos playing in the Kuti mode in Europe, Asia, North and South America. Arguably, there are also more Kuti tribute bands playing abroad than on the African continent. Even before his death, in countries like Colombia, there were numerous cover versions of his songs that Kuti himself probably knew nothing about.

Fela!, the broadway musical composed by Bill T. Jones and sponsored by Jay Z and Will Smith in 2008, went on to have a successful international run taking in Europe and Africa. Since then another Fela-inspired musical extravaganza produced in Nigeria has gone on tour internationally. There are frequent festivals in France, Britain, the United States, Latin America, South Africa and Nigeria celebrating Kuti’s life and work. Kuti’s discography is somewhat confusing for a number of reasons. He was extraordinarily prolific during his almost four-decade long career beginning from the early 60s. He privately established a plethora of record labels and also released many albums through mainstream companies such as EMI and Decca. Some estimates claim he released one hundred and thirty-three albums during his lifetime excluding almost two dozen masterpieces he simply refused to put on wax due to his eventual disillusionment with the music business and societal politics.

As for Afrobeats, in May 2020, US mainstream music outlet, Billboard Magazine, ran a special feature on the global rise of the genre profiling Davido, Tiwa Savage and Mr Eazi. Both Davido and Savage have performed on the US TV Jimmy Fallon show. Mr Eazi entertained US fans alongside Burna Boy in 2019 at the impactful Coachella Festival. His 2020 hit single, Oh My Gawd features Major Lazer and Nicki Minaj. Afrobeats has firmly taken root in France, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Italy supported by a large African diaspora population and enthusiastic European audiences. It is certainly not a mere passing fad but an increasingly durable fixture on the cultural calendar. Only this year, the UK launched its official Afrobeats music chart. And there are now festivals exclusively devoted to Afrobeats.

Nonetheless, Afrobeats musicians and music audiences around the world are immensely indebted to Kuti for the enormous sacrifices he made to lay the solid foundations for a multi-faceted sonic future, the possibilities of which are yet to be exhaustively explored. Kuti was hardly able to reap the benefits of his astonishing work during his scandal-prone life. Indeed, he was an uncommonly courageous and uncompromising artist who often spurned the advances of international entertainment cartels just as he offended local political elites. And so in order to pursue his work, he had to build his own platforms and networks from scratch which entailed finding his own performance spaces, establishing his own record labels and developing independent channels for the appreciation and distribution of his music.

Kuti fought many battles on multiple fronts and, of course, due to his unyielding stance, he incurred great financial and reputational losses. For instance, he once famously turned down Motown’s attempt to buy his diverse back catalogue. But those very losses and sacrifices are what made it possible for Afrobeats to be born. Kuti almost single-handedly charted an aesthetic terrain that is full of yet to be explored musical riches.

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Follow us on Twitter. The African Roots of Cuban Music

By Boima Tucker

Forever condemned as its “heart of darkness,” the world remains baffled as to how Africa has seemingly avoided the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier in the year, as the virus ravaged other parts of the world and prepared to make landfall on the continent, the projections were nothing short of severe.

It was widely anticipated that Africa’s poor and overcrowded living conditions, the prevalence of other diseases like HIV and TB and its lack of well-resourced health systems would make for the deadliest viral path on the globe. Despite their touch of catastrophism, these predictions were not unreasonable given the evidence of despair elsewhere.

What is strange, is the sense of perverse disappointment that this hasn’t been the case. Stranger still, that at the height of doom and gloom, little was done by way of international support to prevent the expected worst case outcomes.

On the flip side, the world is celebrating the lightness of this continent, albeit in the most cliched way—through its products of song and dance. Since the middle of this year, the gospel-inspired, South African house track “Jerusalema” by DJ and Producer Master KG featuring vocalist Nomcebo Zikode, has enraptured a global audience.

What made it especially take-off was its evolution into the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge, prompted by a group of Angolan friends recording themselves with plates of food performing a variation of the line-dance to the song. Following that, similar clips of people dancing to the song have been shared from all over— groups of ordinary people, nuns and priests, healthcare and other essential workers, police and soldiers, fuel attendants; you name it. Per the African Union, Jerusalema is “a song that has transcended its national boundaries and the continent, and has people across the world dancing to its vibrant rhythm.”

The South African government made sure to co-opt the dance challenge, transforming what was a mostly spontaneous and uncoordinated phenomenon to a state-sponsored feel-good narrative. As President Cyril Ramaphosa announced South Africa’s move to its lowest level of COVID-19 lockdown, he urged all South Africans to participate in the dance challenge as part of Heritage Day celebrations which happened in late September. (The holiday itself has a curious history; it replaced Shaka Day and is mostly now an excuse to BBQ.)

Suddenly, a country which had been a powder-keg of disaffection, traumatized at the injustices and suffering endured during lockdown yet divided on who was to blame, became united in cheerful performance as it seemed that at last things were back to normal. And for South Africans, “normal” means being able to repress the fact of normal being the problem; it means comfortably moving from being outraged about police brutality in June to applauding their renditions of the Jerusalema dance in September.

But perhaps Jerusalema is different, in that the hopefulness it expresses is not simply about a return to normal, but about a desire to go beyond it. The lyrics themselves (translated from isiZulu) include the lines, “Jerusalem is my home, save me, take me with you…My place is not here, my kingdom is not here.” Yet, the actually-existing city of Jerusalem, which means “city of peace” and is claimed by all of the Abrahamic faiths yet controlled by Israel, is anything but one.

There is a gap between the religious imagery invoked by the song and the state of religiously- motivated practice today, which makes the fact that Master KG himself isn’t particularly religious more telling of how the song speaks to a deeper yearning in the human condition, one beneath religious sentiment. And, when Zionists (not the South African version of African-inspired Christianity, but supporters of Israel) at one point tried to appropriate the message of the song as endorsing support for Israel, Palestine solidarity activists worked with Palestinian youth in Jerusalem and South African youth in Durban to produce two videos, which raised the profile of the African Palestinian community and solidarity between South Africa and Palestine.

Young Palestinian activists including Janna Jihad and Ahed Tamimi sent video messages inviting Master KG to come to Palestine, and there have been a number of awareness-raising engagements with the artist and his management on the politics of the Palestinian struggle.

That Jerusalema as an idea represents a longing for more than has come before, perhaps could also explain the curious absence of Americans, from the dance challenge crazing the world right now (something writer Michelle Chikaonda pointed out on a recent episode of AIAC Talk).

It was the Massachusetts colonizer John Winthrop who inserted the vision of a new Jerusalem in the gospel of St Matthew into the image of the United States; the founding exceptionalism upon which it would forever conceive itself as a beacon of hope and progress for the rest of the world. As the United States now decidedly proves itself to be a failed state, it renders the majority of the world—who by force or coercion adopted its version of liberalism—failed as well, with the global inability to handle a pandemic the surest testament.

What then, is Jerusalema, if not the finest distillation of a global desire for another city on a hill? And not by simply turning to another great power as America’s ready replacement—China is not the world’s savior—but one that like the dance challenge itself believes in the possibility of collective subjectivity. Of course, this subjectivity can collapse into forms which are reactionary rather than emancipatory.

As Zwide Ndwandwe writes, there is not much separating the rainbow nationalism of the kind uplifting South Africans through the dance challenge, and the xenophobia at the same time proliferating through social media demanding that the government #PutSouthAfricansFirst. It is not enough that there is widespread dissatisfaction about our society as it is underscored by a desire for something better—content must be given to what that better could possibly be.

In a recent episode of AIAC Talk partially devoted to talking through Malawi’s recent elections, Sean Jacobs and I addressed a question to the panelists which dwelled on how Malawi’s new leader, Lazarus Chakwera, is a theologian, one known to refer to citizens as being part of his “flock.” Our reason in asking this was to understand if this was a sign Malawi could possibly be headed toward more of the same demagogic and autocratic leadership that characterizes so much of the rest of the continent.

Yet, in the eyes of Chikaonda and media scholar Jimmy Kainja, this fact about the new president was unremarkable—much as Malawi is a religious country, this is not why Chakwera was elected. In Kainja’s words, “Malawi is a different place now.” Its people have no time for the usual nonsense of the political class that they’ve endured since gaining independence, and now trust in their competence as citizens. It is this spirit of self-determination which enveloped Malawi and saw ordinary citizens play an active role in monitoring and overseeing the elections without foreign observers, and going so far as tracking and giving hourly updates on the flights carrying the ballots.

And it is that spirit of self-determination which is quietly sweeping throughout the continent as citizens respond to the crisis of global capitalism exacerbated by the pandemic. It’s easy to take an isolated look at the successful management of COVID-19 as a public health crisis on the continent, and think that the worst is over and Africa has impressed—but the truth is, we are only just beginning to grapple with the socio-economic fissures that COVID-19 laid bare and worsened.

We are witnessing an ongoing wave of mobilisation on the continent challenging the excesses of neoliberalism—in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere. South Africa’s trade unions and social movements are preparing for a season of nation-wide strike action, ones bringing together the largest trade union federation (which is aligned with the ruling party, the African National Congress) and its closest competitor. Of course, these efforts might fail and no doubt governments will continue to use COVID-19 gathering restrictions as a pretext for repression.

But, the sense you get is that for the first time in a long time, there is belief that self-determination can only be understood as a collective achievement—of creating institutions in our society by guaranteeing the conditions of life for all. These are achievements that have to be fought for politically, and no matter how bad things get they won’t come from the benevolence of an outside actor. The fate of Africa is determined not by the state of the West or China, but only by its people themselves. Maybe, what is becoming stronger as we search for a new city on the hill, is the conviction that we are going to build it ourselves.

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This post is from a new partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.

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Follow us on Twitter. The African Roots of Cuban Music

By Boima Tucker

The government’s ban on public events following confirmation of the first COVID-19 case in Kenya more than two months ago has put a strain on artists’ livelihoods. Visual and performing artists are struggling to earn a living. Kenya’s art scene has taken a hit with emerging artists suffering more than established performance artists, some of who have had the wherewithal to give live shows online.

In response to the economic crisis that has hit the creative industry, the Cabinet Secretary for Sports, Culture and Heritage, Amina Mohammed, released a stimulus package for artists following a presidential directive issued in early April to allocate KSh100 million from the Sports Fund to artists, actors and musicians during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. From the President’s carefully worded speech, it was not clear whether the main intention of the allocation was to cushion the artists against the economic impact of the government restrictions or to make use of the artists’ talents in shaping its messages about the pandemic; in his speech, the President alluded to both intentions. Subsequent statements and press releases from the Cabinet Secretary and relevant dockets under the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Heritage revealed that artists would have to earn the right to the stimulus package and that it would not be a gravy train for “freeloaders”.

But who exactly could be viewed as a freeloader in these hard times when performing artists’ revenues have diminished as a result of the ban on public events since the social restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 were put in place in April? Many Kenyan musicians were already struggling financially before the COVID-19 outbreak and with the government-imposed restrictions you can imagine what such artists have had to go through over the past three months. With bills to pay and barely any revenue coming in but a meager trickle of royalties whose amounts have been questioned, most Kenyan musicians are stretched to the limit.

As a recording and performing artist, I cannot recall a day when my landlord gave me a rent waiver or a free meal at any of the recently reopened restaurants merely because I might have released a great song. Not that I am entitled to such privileges; the point I’m trying to make is that the payment of bills is never in kind and this begs the question how and where a musician can now earn their keep after more than two months out in the cold. In my case, class privilege clearly supports my art. Also, I have a couple of side-hustles – my writing and the social science research gigs that I do. And when all else fails, I can fall back on a support system of family and friends, most of whom also come from a relatively privileged background.

My side-hustles and support system are a clear case of class at work; the university degrees I have, the friends I made in those universities or in other spaces that were accessible to me because of my networks are also a product of my class. This standing places me in a more favourable position than many other artists and yet living off my art is something that I still struggle to achieve. But what of those who may not enjoy the class privilege that I do? Where will they get the money to give them the much-needed stability – food and shelter – to be in a position to write and record the music that could give them access to the stimulus package?

Much as the offer by the Permanent Presidential Music Commission to give free studio time to artists is laudable, their survival in this period is a more pressing concern especially now that some not only have to put food on the table for themselves and their families but as tenants, may also have to contend with pressure from their landlords.

But if we are to overlook the artists’ plight and argue that the government can only meet the artists halfway, one can only imagine the desperation that could push a musician to make music merely in order to receive the financial support. In addition to the time and energy expended to make a song, a more insidious cost would have to be incurred by the artist in order to be considered for the so- called stimulus package – their artistic integrity, independence and imagination.

Granted, it would be somewhat crass and borderline tone-deaf for an artist to produce content that does not speak to the challenge of the season – the COVID-19 pandemic. That would be the use of artistic freedom as an end in and of itself, art for art’s sake, a concept I find selfishly liberal as it ignores the obligations that an artist has toward society, particularly at a time when our society’s well-being is not only threatened by the pandemic but also by the government’s response to the pandemic. What should be challenged, however, is the interest of the Sports, Culture and Heritage ministry, representing the government, in providing a questionable content-template to serve as a guide for the issues that artists should speak to in order for them to be eligible for government patronage. The artists’ creations will further have to be subjected to a vetting process by a panel of government appointees.

The tenor of the Sports Ministry’s press release calling for works of art as well as the Cabinet Secretary’s words in an interview with a local Television Station indicated that, in making their music, musicians are to convey messages of hope and, more significantly, trumpet the directives of the ministry of health in response to the pandemic. But what of the other issues that are germane to the pandemic and that deserve the public’s attention? Will the ministry compensate artists who compose songs about the inhumanity of the police-supervised demolitions of the homes of Kariobangi North residents that were carried out in defiance of a court order in the middle of the longs rains and during a pandemic? What of the Ruai demolitions undertaken in the thick of night by the same government or the killings of citizens during the enforcement of the curfew imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus? How about the loans taken out by the government which Kenyans will eventually have to pay? Will it provide financial relief for artists whose works would portray the inhumane conditions some households have had to endure during this period due to the inequality caused by historical injustices of which the president’s family is a beneficiary?

Are songs of hope and ministerial directives the only way to move a society forward in times of crisis? What of blunt, sobering truths? When the Cabinet Secretary calls on artists to make songs that convey messages of hope, messages that would increase the artists’ chances of securing financial support from the government, it is implied that the songs will be silent on those messages that do not inspire hope. It is implicit, from the words of the Cabinet Secretary, that these silences are necessary in securing the promise of a better tomorrow for Kenyans. But what do we know of silences? Ernest Patrick Monte’s 2017 article “Romancing the nation, effacing history: reading Kenya through patriotic choral music”, says:

Patriotic choral music can therefore be read not only reflecting the culture of sycophancy but also contributing towards it. Consequently, not only what songs say, but what they leave out – the very silences in the songs – frame the music to serve purposes of propaganda.

The stimulus package is clearly driven by a Machiavellian policy rather than humanitarian considerations. The government would rather have artists vomit sunshine than share harsh, inconvenient truths about some of its excesses during this period. The government’s intention is not to cushion the artists but to stifle critical narratives while using their talents to drive the government narrative. The government’s use of state resources to bolster its message presents many desperate artists with a Hobson’s choice – either produce music that toes the government line or forgo the government’s largesse. Given the desperation of many of our artists, the former will be a more appealing alternative – a compromise that even politically progressive artists may have to make to put food on the table and maintain a roof over their heads.

In Kimeru, we say Nkea iti maruru ii metho aki ituniakaia, a poor person has no pain, they can only strain their eyes. Artists will have to accept the “deal” in spite of themselves. With their livelihoods threatened in this season of coronavirus, many artists are likely to jump at the “opportunity” that the government has provided, an opportunity that will not only come at a cost to them but also at a cost to the public. The public’s attention will have been diverted from such harsh realities as police brutality and demolitions but which at some point it will still have to reckon with because they will continue to occur.

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Follow us on Twitter. The African Roots of Cuban Music

By Boima Tucker

Criticism of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s announcement of Sh200 million monthly payouts to artists has centred on mistakenly equating the immediate needs of healthcare workers at the front line of the battle to beat the coronavirus with paying royalties for creative work. This announcement came on the back of his order to lock in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kilifi and Kwale counties.

Completely missed in the ensuing furore was the fact that Kenyatta was only reporting progress on an earlier pledge, when he said: “My administration has projected that a total of Sh200 million every month will be paid to musicians through the system and other platforms. This translates to over Sh2 billion going into the pockets of Kenyan artists. These payments will begin this week in line with the pledge that I made in January.”

Should the president have used the same platform announcing measures to address the crisis, such as setting up of a National COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund, getting the seed capital for the Fund from the Exchequer, taxation, and pay cuts to assure the country of continuing entertainment from artistes?

The arts during the HIV/AIDS epidemic

Entertainment is the visible contribution the arts make, but recent local history is replete with examples of how music, performance theatre, literature and visual arts have enabled conversations that built a shared understanding of complex problems to enable the people to find solutions. Song, dance and theatre modelled on the Latin America experience around theatre for development have helped Kenya to confront poorly understood phenomena like the HIV/AIDS pandemic, chipping away at stigma and bringing hundreds of thousands of infected people into care and treatment to blunt its effects on the affected and reduce its impacts on society.

“When one speaks of health communication using art and the role of artists, several creative pieces in different genres come to mind,” Oby Obyerodhyambo, a public health professional and leading author, playwright, actor, noted in an interview. “I think of songs such as Todi by the late Oliver Mutukudzi, Dunia Mbaya by Prince Julie, Attention na SIDA by the late Franco Luambo Makiadi. I am reminded of the images of the late Philly Lutaaya descending the flights of stairs at Entebbe for the last time after he had broken the stigma about HIV in Uganda several years earlier using his music. Music and musicians played a major role in raising awareness about HIV when all that people knew about HIV was the death. Music was not best in terms of providing detailed information about the health continuum from the transmission to treatment but played a huge role in breaking the silence about HIV. The mention of the word UKIMWI was eased by songs like Dunia Mbaya increasing community discourse on HIV was greatly aided by art and artists.”

Awareness of how to deal with HIV/AIDS was not done through music alone. There was theatre that provided more latitude for a detailed description of the virus, its behaviour and its impact on life.

“However, theatre had a terrible history,” Obyerodhyambo pointed out. “The journey started with the horrific play, Tone kwa Tone, that was among the first HIV dramas staged in Kenya. It was grotesque; diabolic images of skulls, blood dripping, coffins and HIV depicted as a devil, coffins and promiscuity and immortality associated with HIV. The typical play showed the Simon Makonde story of infected today and dead in seven days marked by intense suffering. This enhanced stigma to a very high level.”

Awareness of how to deal with HIV/AIDS was not done through music alone. There was theatre that provided more latitude for a detailed description of the virus, its behaviour and its impact on life.

Nonetheless the power of using theatre was clearly noted and was thereafter followed subtler plays on HIV, such as Positive Identity written by Oby Obyerodhyambo using the pseudonym Rangóndi Othuon that also won the Okoth K’Obonyo Playwriting Competition that used to be organised by Theatre Workshop Production.

There were several other plays by JPR Ochieng’Odero taken around the country under AIDSCAP project. This USAID-funded programme morphed into the countrywide Theatre for Development or Magnet Theatre projects under the aegis of PATH and FHI. Thousands of shows were staged by the troupe of artists using a Forum Theatre approach inspired by Paulo Freire and Augusto Boan techniques. Around this time we also had Maisha ya Nuru where radio soaps and radio magazine platforms were used.

“At this point, the main role of art/artists was – raise awareness of the REAL cause of HIV and AIDS, promote preventive behaviour (Abstinence, Reduction of Sexual Partners and Condom use),” said Oby Obyerodhyambo, who was at the centre of it all while working with PATH. “It was used to reduce HIV stigma, promote acceptance of PLWHIV [people living with HIV] and promote community dialogue around HIV and AIDS to de-mythologise HIV and give hope to families of PLWHIV (mainly that avoiding opportunistic infections could prolong lives). At this point there were plays that taught that an infected person should prepare for death – there were the Memory Projects with scrapbooks. This was before the advent on ARV [antiretrovirals]. Theatre promoted testing and many people got to know their HIV status courtesy of Magnet Theatre – the MT that we did at PATH would have a very tight referral for HIV testing.”

Apart from theatre and music, graphic art also played a major part, especially the Talking Walls projects where murals were used to engage the community in dialogues. These murals travelled a long way from the grotesque images. In some places, these images can still be seen. Art provided a stark reminder of the ravages of HIV, but also promoted stigma by negative portraying PLWHIV. There were posters that played the same sort of role.

The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) trained puppeteers and promoted the use of life-size puppets. These travelling, life-size puppet shows were the firsts attempts to objectify the disease with non-real characters who could discuss HIV and being HIV-positive and who could explore real taboo subjects. Puppets actually were the first ones to bring caricature and humour into the portrayal of HIV and AIDS. Their role has been underplayed. Using puppets, the stigmatisation of PLWIV and the mystery around HIV was reduced.

Similarly, these arts— Theatre for Development/Participatory Education Theatre— unlocked emotive conversations in the long search for a new order, contributing to securing Kenya’s constitution- making as one of the most participatory processes in the world.

“The conscientisation of Kenyans towards a new public awareness and education came to the fore in the early 90s with the advent of political pluralism,” Kawive Wambua, an artists and governance expert noted in a seminal paper, “The Artists as the Managers of the Political Transition in Kenya”, presented at the Kenya Oral Literature Association (KOLA) Conference on East African Oral Literature in Kisumu in 2005. “CSOs [civil society organisations] such as Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), Citizens Coalition for Constitutional Change (4CS), Legal Resource Foundation (LRF), Centre for Governance and Democracy (CGD) and CLARION commissioned plays to be written and engaged artists to go around the country popularising such ‘taboo’ issues as human rights, good governance and rule of law.”

Wambua noted:

Plays that were significant in the 1990s, were such as Professor Kivutha Kibwana’s Kanzala, Wakanyote Njuguna’s Kabla ya Dhoruba, Kithaka wa Mberia’s Kifo Kisimani, Wahome Mutahi’s Mugaathe Mubogothi, Makaririra Kioro, and Mugathe Ndotono among others. Though these plays lack specific merit as Participatory Education Theatre (PET) or even as Interactive Participatory Community Education Theatre (IPCET) texts, they were unconventional (some even compromising style for messagism) and they interrogated difference and diffidence in community leadership. These writers as well were prominent figures in the intellectual and human rights movements and hence had a lot of influence in the course of action on the educational theatre scene. Their plays, among others, were the precursors of the underground NGO movement that came up with the IPCET play. The individual and really forceful activities of civil society organisations like 4Cs, CGD, LRF and a plethora of other organisations suffered the same fate of being but information points for the community. Information, we should note at this point, empowers, but it is only communication that liberates. And this key issue was never sufficiently addressed. Art was severally massacred at the behest of militant advocacy.

“I would like to isolate the 4Cs and say that they started off as a loosely structured lobby group for constitutional reform,” Kawive Wambua added during an interview. “For three years, its single programme was theatre. The theatre group used the rich history of oppression in the country to create a play “Five Centuries”, later to become the name of the group. The play was an interrogation of the suffering and pain the people of Kenya have gone through in the hands of selfish leaders, the fact of an independence that never was, and the need for this century to be a century of nation reconstruction and a new constitutional order. This trend has survived across the years, at times faltering at the intersection of artistic expressionism and political advocacy.”

He noted: “It is clear that theatre mobilised citizens and led to the groundswell that bore the Change-the-Constitution movement of the late 90s. I have argued elsewhere that the change of government in 2002 was midwifed by artists – literally. Aforementioned groups and others such as 5Cs Theatre were instrumental in cultivating the language of rights and self-liberation by citizens from the government and by women from the clutches of patriarchy. In the mid and late 90s also Theatre for Development (TfD), Participatory Education Theatre (PET) was being used for reproductive health education and HIV and AIDs awareness. CARE-Kenya and other non-profit outfits were big on theatre as a primary methodology of Behaviour Change Communication (BCC). This was to continue in 2003 onwards with Magnet Theatre projects all over Kenya.

“It is clear that theatre mobilised citizens and led to the groundswell that bore the Change-the-Constitution movement of the late 90s. I have argued elsewhere that the change of government in 2002 was midwifed by artists – literally…”

In the run-up to the 2002 election, Gidi Gidi, Maji Maji’s popular song We Are Unbwogable became the rallying call for the nation’s new heroes Those people who had been frustrated by the regime and its machinations came together and sought artists to ignite the fire that would stamp them with confidence and endear them to the electorate. Another song, Yote ya Wezekana, a popular gospel tune, was used to appropriate the political mood and to whip up the mood and empathy of the people from the apparent defeatism and lethargic complacency that had enveloped them after three subsequent defeat upon defeat of those that seemed to be conscientious leaders faced by the misuse of state machinery and resources.

From disease comes great art

“Art has a way of objectifying reality and therefore making difficult topics discussable. This was clearly the case with HIV because of the preponderance of sexual transmission,” Oby Obyerodhyambo pointed out. “Art very effectively made it possible to discuss the issues around HIV and suggest the steps that could be taken to cope. Objectivity through depiction in art and film such as the iconic movie Philadelphia where Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington dealt with the issues of human rights and stigma associated with HIV. Art and artists worked through their creative expression to raise awareness of HIV; build knowledge about the disease – its transmission, diagnosis, management and prevention strategies and removing myths that fuelled stigma and discrimination; created a more receptive environment by famous musicians coming out as Lutaaya did; then there were those who drew crowds by their fame and did edutainment shows – Prince Jully, Ochieng’ Kabaselle, (many in local languages) and big names like Franco Luambo Makiadi with Attention na SIDA.”

“The spectre of disease, pandemic, and death have been with us since life emerged on this rock. And once we got around to discovering music, homo sapiens (and perhaps Neanderthals, whose numbers were probably drastically culled by disease), began reacting to these periods of widespread sickness with stories, art, and song,” writes Allan Cross, a broadcaster and a commentator for Global News.

Utilitarian art that responds to the crisis of the moment certainly has its uses, but when the crisis of the coronavirus is behind us, it is to the songs, the theatre and the stories from this epoch that Kenyans will look for a reflective history of their experience.

“The first recorded pandemic hit the people of Athens between 429 and 426 BC,” Cross writes. “No one knew why, other than the gods must have been displeased with mankind. We still don’t know what caused the death of up to 100,000 — Typhus? Typhoid Fever? Some sort of viral hemorrhagic disease? — but it left an unusual mark on the city. Those were the peak years of Greek tragedy, a form of theatre that had tremendous influence on both ancient Rome in a few centuries and the Renaissance more than a thousand years in the future. From disease came great art.”

Science is moving at great speed to educate us about the coronavirus, how it spreads and ways to contain it, which require changes that cannot be enforced by official diktat alone. “The Black Death killed majority of the population in Florence in 1348 (and maybe as much as 60 per cent of all of Europe between 1331 and 1353) yet Florence rallied, becoming a flashpoint of intellectual and artistic evolution that was felt for centuries,” Cross adds. “London was plagued through much of the 16th century and King Henry VIII was forced to self-isolate during the Sweating Sickness of 1529, much in the way we are today and saw a spike in fatalities in the early 1600s. But as England slowly recovered, Shakespeare was somehow inspired to write King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra, all in 1606.”

Utilitarian art that responds to the crisis of the moment certainly has its uses, but when the crisis of the coronavirus is behind us, it is to the songs, the theatre and the stories from this epoch that Kenyans will look for a reflective history of their experience.

Exploring these tragedies, the deprivations they visit upon society and the adaptations that are required to survive is a matter of emotional persuasion as it is of logic. “The artist provides society with emotions, colour, and texture. Scientists think up of ways to make life easier, builders and technicians turn those scientific ideas into tangible objects. These things help us – they blend our foods, put roofs over our heads, make mowing the lawn easier – but they never add real emotion. Artists come in to play on our emotions and subconscious thoughts,” notes Andre Deherrera, a creator/artist for AndreDDesign.

Aziza Atta, founder of Ozoza Lifestyle in Abuja, notes: “Art is the natural way in which we create relationships in the world and also where we build life experiences. Being an artist is to express one’s soul. The responsibility of the artist is to consciously bring about an internal change within us. We cannot bring to the world what we have not ourselves internally absorbed, digested and assimilated. It all starts in the heart and in the mind. Through its emotional outreach, art can affect these transformations. It is a powerful force.”

Besides artists being direct taxpayers, they are also consumers. In a streamlined and transparent system, paying artists the over Sh2 billion (about $20 million) owed to them each year can take away a great deal of pressure on the state to provide relief.

The culture and creative industry

Tapping into the potential of the creative economy can turn artists into significant cogs that build a nation’s resilience, beyond just contributing to the national gross domestic product. There is no doubt that this president the others before him have not given the culture and creative industry (CCI) the attention it deserves. However, Uhuru Kenyatta and his team have suddenly woken up to what the CCI stakeholders have been taking about. Gains about the CCI are well documented in reports such as the “Ubunifu Report on the Status of the Creative Economy in East Africa”, the Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC)ianalysis report on the trends shaping the entertainment and media industry in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Tanzania, dubbed “Getting Personal: Putting the Me in Entertainment & Media: Insights from the Entertainment & Media Outlook: 2019–2023 An African Perspective”, and many other related industry reports.

Champions for CCI have included none other than Hon. Dr Mukhisa Kituyi, the Secretary- General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), through numerous reports and recommendations and conferences, such as the one that led to UNCTAD’s Nairobi Maafikiano 2016.

In its report, UNCTAD observes: “Trends show the ‘creative economy’ can cultivate meaningful work, make money and help deliver prosperity for all. The creative economy, in some ways, defies definition almost by definition. But its significant 3% contribution to global gross domestic product (GDP) makes it a powerful emerging economic sector that is being strengthened by a surge in digitisation and services.”

Since 2004, UNCTAD has analysed creative industries, providing important insights into its global dimensions. UNCTAD’s Creative Economy Programme, whose focus is on trade in the creative industries, has placed the arts on the world economic and development agenda by imagining a role for them in the growth of developing economies. Its data on trade in creative goods and services provide important insights for understanding the creative economy at a time when many emerging and developing economies are seeking to diversify.

“The creative economy and its industries are strategic sectors that if nurtured can boost competitiveness, productivity, sustainable growth, employment and exports potential,” notes Pamela Coke-Hamilton, UNCTAD’s international trade and commodities director.

The creative economy leverages creativity, technology, culture and innovation in fostering inclusive and sustained economic growth and development. Creative economy sectors include arts and craft, books, films, paintings, festivals, songs, designs, digital animation and video games. They generate income through trade (exports) and intellectual property rights, and create new jobs in higher occupational skills, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises.

UNCTAD’s second report, Creative Economy Outlook and Country Profile Report 2018, notes that the “size of the global market for creative goods expanded substantially more than doubling in size from $208 billion in 2002 to $509 billion in 2015.”

In this report, it was noted that the “creative goods exports from Kenya stood at $40.9 million (Sh4.3 billion) and imports at $195 million (Sh20.6 billion) in 2013, the last year for which data was available. Besides the performing arts, visual arts and cultural heritage, Kenyans produce films, videos, television and radio shows, video games, music and books. There is important work being undertaken in the graphic design, fashion and advertising subsectors. These creative activities need to be anchored in political and governmental commitment and concrete support.”

Government commitment and concrete support through the streamlining of the Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) and Collective Management Organisations (CMOs) by streamlining the sector can deliver benefits for artists but can also open a new revenue stream for government. In January this year, President Kenyatta directed that KECOBO license digital platforms run by telecommunication firms and media companies to channel payments of royalties to the three CMOs “in order to ensure compensation for all generators of the works”.

In this report, it was noted that the “creative goods exports from Kenya stood at $40.9 million (Sh4.3 billion) and imports at $195 million (Sh20.6 billion) in 2013, the last year for which data was available.

“Content Service Providers who work with digital platforms such as Skiza and Viusasa, will be eliminated because they sit outside the CMOs,” President Uhuru said. “My practical direction on this is to have all rights holders register on the National Rights Registry.”

Additional funds totalling Sh100m from the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Heritage are also to be made available from the Sports Fund during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“These new measures will see the rise of tariffs collected and will create immense savings on the processes of collecting royalties,” he added. “It is estimated that the new system will see an increase in collections from a previous Sh200 million per year to an estimated Sh2 billion per year, a tenfold increase.”

The ministry’s perennial underfunding over the years and its general poor performance mean that they need to be watched closely to turn the order into reality. The coronavirus crisis also presents an opportunity. President Kenyatta has ordered KECOBO to gazette new tariffs within 30 days and ensure that public service vehicles, the hospitality industry, and broadcasters apply them.

The arts and COVID-19

The State House Choir has already showed that artists are going to be significant cogs in the fight against COVID-19. Like in the past, artists in various genres will need to come on board to help deal with numerous issues around COVID 19.

“I suggest that art could be used to respond to the misinformation or disinformation about COVID-19 and coronavirus,” Oby Obyerodhyambo pointed out. “To present the facts in a very easy and understandable way that our grandmothers and children under 5 can understand – unlike HIV that was so stigmatising because it involved sex among others this one is less inhibiting. However, it goes to the very core of our cultural practices so we need to explain why we need to social distance, stay at home and be careful about what we touch – to demystify the preventive procedures including donning of masks.”

He added: “We are social animals and greet and hug a lot. We are a ‘touchy’ culture so the idea that we cannot touch – shake hands – is harder than avoiding sex. Basically we are telling people to dehumanise themselves. We can use the art of humour to do this and create a way that we can laugh at this again because it is not as difficult as abandoning sexual partners. Over that we need art to explain the logic of doing what we are doing.”

Through art, we will explain the lockdown so that the punitiveness of it is explained. The idea of curtailing freedom to move and interact is difficult to explain unless some counter-narrative is spun. We must explain to the man or woman who cannot go to the farm or market or visit his relatives how this is for his or her own good.

“Again, there is a need to reduce the fiat that the administration is adopting,” Obyerodhyambo added during the interview. “The ‘or else’ approach is counter-intuitive. How do you explain to me that going out to fetch food for my hungry children is for their own good? Artists need to rally the public around ownership of the response to corona. The way that the globe was galvanised around the movements like ‘Africa for Africans’ where funds were donated to support the victims of famine must be the approach. The arts must tug at the heartstrings of the population, we must show empathy and concern for one another.” The role of the artist in the world after corona

No one best captures the hopes and aspirations of artists and the art world better than Dalen O’Connell, a theatre artist from Minnesota, USA, when the coronavirus chaos is finally contained. In a Facebook post, Dalen noted that in theatre “we have a tradition – whenever the theatre is empty, we are always sure to leave one light on. Typically on a stand in the center of the stage, this light is known as the ghost light. There are many stories about its origin- but it’s meaning is unmistakable. It means though the theatre is empty, WE WILL RETURN. So here’s to us. The actors, the technicians, the directors, the carpenters, the designers, the dancers, the teachers, the students, the freelancers, those on tour, those at sea, the electricians, the stitchers, the makers, the stage managers — THE ARTISTS. Many of us have taken big hits during this virus. Financial and emotional weights have come crashing down as our entire industry is reduced to nothing but a bunch of ghost lights. But those ghost lights are temporary place holders. They are a sign. We might be down now- but our passion, our creativity, our drive is still center stage. We will be unplugging those ghost lights in no time. Until then- here’s a ghost light – to let the world know we will be back.” (There was an accompanying picture of the ghost light).

Obyerodhyambo notes that there are hideous songs that have been produced by so-called artists telling people to wash their hands, sanitise, and keep social distance. Most of them are very hurriedly done and lack any artistic flair. After COVID they will remain uninspiring and irrelevant.

He notes: “There is no artistic rendition carrying the questions that society is grappling with such as: Where is the money donated by all manner of people going? Why are our facilities so decrepit and our health care professionals unprotected? Why is COVID weaponised so that the police are killing Kenyans in enforcing the Public Health Act and the curfew? Why is the donated testing costing 10,000 shillings and why are people being charged for being quarantined in places they did not choose? Why are police officers corruptly landing people in quarantine? And why are come counties giving masks and why are politicians branding donated hand sanitisers and getting away scot-free?”

“The role of artists DURING the crisis should be of interest because if they are the moral compass and mirror they should be asking these difficult questions,” Oby added during the interview. “Artists should be questioning why Kenyans still do not wear masks and are not physically distancing? Why are people sneaking in and out of the locked-down cities? There should be messages of self- reflection and introspection. Do the artists actually understand the public health issues at play? Can they be allowed to pass on the message they do not understand?”

Like the proverbial Phoenix, artists believe the industry will rise once again and take its place in society – as entertainers, educators and tax payers.

Obyerodhyambo notes that there are hideous songs that have been produced by so- called artists telling people to wash their hands, sanitise, and keep social distance. Most of them are very hurriedly done and lack any artistic flair. After COVID they will remain uninspiring and irrelevant.

“I believe, like Okot p’Bitek, the artist is the ruler,” Kawive Wambua pointed out in a conversation when this article was being written. “Artists have already unravelled the coronavirus and are crooning from YouTube on what the pandemic means for us. They interpret it and entertain at the same time. In the post-corona period, they will puck the husks of our lives and relive our lives on stage, talking about love gone and death visiting but unwanted. They will create for us a log of memory as they help us reflect and recreate a new world – where wealth and power are demystified and life glorified. They will help us imagine a new world.”

In Kenya, the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) envisages artists and cultural workers playing a key role in re-engineering our society. It envisages the resourcing and revitalisation of the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Sports to take lead in the rebuilding process. Advocacy and education work using art that will even entail coming to terms with the post-COVID realities will be critical.

The government will need to move beyond talking and tokenism in its effort to strengthen the culture and creative industry. Research shows that this is the next frontier for growth, but there is need for sound investment in the right legal and policy frameworks, financial and human resources, technology, strengthening institutions and associations, among others.

“Double-digit growth is anticipated for Kenya,” the PwC-backed Insights from the Entertainment & Media Outlook: 2019–2023 An African Perspective notes. “Kenya’s E&M market is set to see growth at a 10.3% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) over the next five years, reaching nearly US$3.0 billion in 2023. In 2018 the market rose by 13.0% year-on-year to make US$1.8 billion.”

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

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The African Roots of Cuban Music

By Boima Tucker Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

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The African Roots of Cuban Music

By Boima Tucker A talent emerged with a vociferous, shrill and piercing cry deep in the heart of Kayole on June 12, 1990. It was an uncertain time. Agitations for multiparty democracy clouded the air amidst arbitrary detentions, torture and killings. Still, a mother – freed from the listlessness of a third trimester – rocked a plump newborn. As the cries of Robert Ouko’s assassination tapered, it was only fitting that the mother in Kayole thought it wise to name her new hope – Brian Ouko Robert – perhaps as a silent resistance against the dictatorial regime. I do not know. I have not asked. But I know we use names to resist erasure.

Brian Ouko Robert – aka Mr. Omollo aka Khaligraph Jones – was welcomed by a troubled country of barely 20 million people. Exactly 28 years later, this baby released a debut album, Testimony 1990, and give us a chance to look back not only at this baby who has now become a man, but at a country whose population, just like its troubles, has doubled. Let us talk about the music of this prodigious talent.

Testimony 1990

Testimony 1990 is a testimony of Kaligraph Jones’s life, his troubles, and those of his country. Khaligraph is not an overnight celebrity. His success is not the product of the modern viral phenomenon, where the gods of the internet choose to crown a new artist with a million views on Youtube for some mumble rap. He is not the product of accidental fame but of tenacity.

His interest in music began at an early age in elementary school. He attended Imara Primary School and Brucewood Secondary School, and at 13 his love of music was visible and palpable. It helped that his older brother loved music too. Together they released their first rap track in 2004.

But Kenya has one of the most unforgiving hip hop music ecosystems. There are only two options for an artist: have the right connections and money, or be willing to toil for years through venom- infested underground rap battles to gain recognition.

Khaligraph made his bones the hard way.

In 2009, The Channel O Emcee Africa tour, sponsored by Sprite, came calling in search of the premier freestyle MC. They dubbed it the Channel O MC Challenge. At the heart of the competition was the desire to initiate awareness of “street life” as a sociocultural context captured by local hip hop music. Khaligraph, then a 19-year-old lad, laced his gloves and threw himself into the ring.

Let us recount the day.

A Saturday night. June 6 2009. The venue is Club Clique. The finals for the Emcee Africa Kenya edition. Early that day, over 50 MCs flocked to Baricho Road to register for the competition. The fans were your typical pre-skinny-jeans hip hop crowd. Baggy jeans, hoods, Timbaland, bling bling – fake no less – and a gangsta attitude to boot. The judges: Mwafreeka, Abbas Kubaff aka Doobeez, and Nazizi. Three notable voices with sledgehammer disc tracks to their names.

Kenya has one of the most unforgiving hip hop music ecosystems. There are only two options for an artist: have the right connections and money, or be willing to toil for years through venom-infested underground rap battles to gain recognition.

The judges have their ears tuned for isolating the dope from the whack rappers. During the auditions, Mwafreeka is reported to have told a hopeless contestant to say aloud how whack they were. This nitbit reminds me of my primary school teacher, Mr. Odede, who, when we could not get our mathematics right, admonished us, en whole, to shout, to the world how sheep we were. Sheep most were.

A line-up of 10 MCs is selected to battle for the top spot. They are: Point Blank. Long Jon. Lethal Dynamic. Oluchina. Khaligraph. Kip. Kimya. Bizzle. O.D. And one female MC, Xtatic. I lioness out to destroy the cabal of bloody manes.

It was simple: get to the stage and showcase your lyrical prowess, spitting spur-of-the-moment rhymes, either acapella or on beat boxing, or you could prompt the judges to give you a topic if you thought you had mad skills. Eliminations pitted Point Blank vs Khaligraph for the big prize = $10,000. That is, 780,000 Kenya shillings. (A dollar was going for 78 Kenyan shillings in 2009. It goes for 100 Kenya shillings today. A weaker shilling.)

Point Blank floors Khaligraph. Everybody agrees. But this would mark the beginning of Khaligraph’s ascendancy. In that list of 10 MCs, 10 years later, none has been as industrious as Khaligraph. None can challenge him to the throne of Kenya’s top MC today. None dominates the airwaves like he does today. Testimony 1990 is a testament of his focus, the fire lit that Saturday night in 2009.

It is a New Age album, warm and optimistic. It does not lament. It chronicles contemporary challenges besetting a young man in Nairobi. It is not belt out in broody lyricism, perhaps because Testimony 1990 comes from an artist who has achieved remarkable success. It is not a chronicle of his status now, as an artist, but a sort of reflection of a past lived through, of battles won. It is unlike the legendary Kalamashaka with their gritty rhymes and the personal catastrophe of jumping a thousand hurdles and still not making it to the Promised Land.

The album opens with “Testimony” featuring Sagini, a quintessential recap of the spirit of the album, and “Blessings” – a track thanking God. The warmth and reflection is a manifestation of the prevailing mood in the hip hop world today. One can say most albums released in 2018 sailed in a sea of positivity. Warm dynamic performances packaged with the versatility of moods and styles. “No chance, featuring the immensely talented Fena Gitu, is a clean introspective lay of wisdom. It is a combination of rapping and singing, away from the old times when rappers laid two or three verses on a solo cut. Instead we have a fluency where rap is blended neatly with song, interacting much more than you’d find in the two-dimensional hook-led templates of old. It is customary to catch an older cat being mentioned, or a style or voice aped, sometimes temporarily. It is paying homage when a rapper references an older rapper or quotes a line. It is a nod of influence. An acknowledgement that the old wordplay still lives, that it has been connected to the present. Not sure whether anybody realized it, but even in that track with Msupa S, Khaligraph pulled a little of Johhny Vigeti: that raspy voice. He does it again in “For Life”. If you love Mr Vigeti, you can pick Khaligraph channeling him Vigeti from mid second verse.

The album opens with “Testimony” featuring Sagini, a quintessential recap of the spirit of the album, and “Blessings” – a track thanking God. The warmth and reflection is a manifestation of the prevailing mood in the hip hop world today.

The production of some of the tracks is a nod to the prevailing styles ruling the market. “Gwala”, like “Yego”, is trap music, same as “Taking it all” with Timmy Blanco, same as “Don’t Know” with KO. All nods to the South African contemporaries, that up here in East Africa, we can do it just like you do. “Beat It” channels the pop icon Michael Jackson. “Make Babies” is a typical Khaligraph lyrical flexing: just shouting from the rooftops that he can accelerate if he wants to. He channel’s Eminem’s flow towards the end.

“Instagram Girls” and “Superwoman” are storytelling tracks. “Aisee” with Ray C is a light danceable beat. Ray C was the sultry goddess of our teenage years. She peppered our adolescence with sexual provocation. As a playlist, the album, with its solid lyrical releases, reflects an artist who has grown and is comfortable with his voice, an artist who is ready to put Kenya’s hip hop on the international map.

On the other hand, there are concerns over the lack of politically-conscious hip hop in Kenya.

Hip hop as a political force

Hip hop is inherently political. With its roots traced to the militant spoken word by groups such as The Last Poets and The Watts Prophets, hip hop has always delivered political missives from the front line. In the 1980s, hip hop chronicled and reacted to the policies of US President Ronald Reagan, which called for widespread tax cats, decreased social spending, increased military spending and the deregulation of domestic markets. Reaganomics led to massive cuts to social programmes and widened income inequality, consequences which were particularly worse for African American families.

Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five captured this devastation in “The Message” in 1982. Robert Hilburn of Los Angeles Times described the single as “a revolutionary seven-minute record that is a brilliant compact chronicle of the tension and despair of the ghetto life that rips the innocence of the American Dream.”

These hip hop forefathers opened the door for younger fiery voices. When Public Enemy came to the fore, they earned the moniker Black America’s CNN. Public enemy centered political and cultural consciousness in a sonic experimentation infused with skilled poetic rhymes. They were ferocious unlike anything that had been seen before.

Hip hop is inherently political. With its roots traced to the militant spoken word by groups such as The Last Poets and The Watts Prophets, hip hop has always delivered political missives from the front line. Life outcomes were no better in Kenya. The economy collapsed from a nominal GDP of USD 7.265 billion in 1980 to USD 6.135 billion in 1985. Even worse, Kenya became one of the first countries to sign a Structural Adjustment Programme loan with the World Bank. The trade liberalisation experience was a gross disappointment and threw the early 1990s into great uncertainty. But before the ship could be directed away from the high waves, Kamlesh Pattni, as the chief architect of what became known as the Goldenberg Scandal, in collaboration with the top operatives in the Moi government, including the president himself, raped the country, stealing billions from the public coffers. An ignominy that lost the country the equivalent of 10% of GDP.

The economic devastation created fertile ground for the emergence of one of the most influential hip hop acts in Kenya, Ukoo Flani, in 1995. The group’s music flourished as a form of protest – authentic, gritty, and startling in its boldness. Ukoo Flani historicised slum life, using Dandora as a poster child for the effects of endemic corruption, breakdown of public service delivery, rampant crime and police brutality, and immense suffering during the Moi dictatorship. Hip hop, belted out in Sheng – to escape the censor of the police state– became a tool for the disenfranchised young men in the sprawling ghettos to voice their dissatisfaction and dissent.

Over the past two decades, hip hop has oscillated from social and political commentary to easy-going party jams, or a mix of both. In America, subgenres such as gangsta rap brought news styles to socio-political commentary, as reminiscent in NWA’s “F**k the Police”. But this was clouded by portrayals of masculinity, sexuality, and materialism in ways that seemed anti-ethical to the messaging of the preceding decade. In Kenya, artists, particularly those in the Underground, continued to rail against urban violence and dysfunction, police brutality and extrajudicial killing of young men in slums.

Khaligraph’s music attempts to carry both social and political commentary and easy-going party jams. While a majority of his tracks are fashioned for the club, a few explore social and political themes. The track “Gaza” is a song about Nairobi’s notorious criminal gang by the same name. The track juxtaposes a dialogue between two people – a living gang member and a deceased one, with the threat of Hessy – Nairobi’s super cop – in the middle. The living gang member, as most are wont to be, is steeped in anger, crime and violence, spewing threats at Hessy for cutting down the gang friend, and vowing revenge. In slow, introspective storytelling, the dead gang member feeds the living member with sober, down-to-earth advice to let go of the idea of meting out revenge on the cop, or they’ll eat copper – Sheng’s euphemism for the rampant extrajudicial killings of young men perceived to be members of criminal gangs.

Hip hop, belted out in Sheng – to escape the censor of the police state– became a tool for the disenfranchised young men in the sprawling ghettos to voice their dissatisfaction and dissent.

“Chali ya Ghetto” (2017) is a narrative of life in the ghetto, one that extols the virtues of hard work and focus. The central message is that fortitude is the only path ghetto youth have for getting out of the slums alive, for social mobility. Such tracks, however, do not detail the extent of systemic marginalisation that not only pushes young people to drugs and gang violence but also effectively imprisons 60% of Nairobi’s population in informal settlements.

The question of whether hip hop can become a political mobilising force beyond the restrictions of personal protest is an old one. Most rappers start their musical career with an outrage against a system of oppression. As their careers progress, most tone down their lyrics to gain mainstream approval. It is only those who persist in the Underground that model their entire career on social and political commentary. In the modern marketplace, post-2000s, mainstream hip hop, inspired by gangsta rap, features the symbols of crass materialism – from gold chains, souped-up cars, toxic displays of masculinity, and sexual objectification.

Thanks to the Kanye West era, which began with the College Dropout in 2004, hip hop has succeeded in breaking down the old impregnable wall between commercial and socially-conscious hip hop. As Common told Fader in 2016; “Kanye kind of brought in a thing where it was like, you can rap about getting money and ‘Jesus Walks’. You can be down with Jay Z and Mos Def. Kanye brought together those different worlds.” This is the seismic shift that made Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 album, “To Pimp a Butterfly” or Childish Gambino’s “This is America” possible.

These shifts have also been replayed in Kenya. The mixing of commercial success and socially- conscious hip hop is what has made it possible for a commercial artist such as King Kaka to release “Wajinga Nyinyi” (2019) – one of the most impactful political protest tracks in recent years. It is not that the track tells Kenyans what they don’t know; rather, King Kaka serialises what is discussed daily on social media, and what is splashed on the front pages of daily newspapers. The lyrics translate the dysfunctions of a nation – clothed daily in civil terms – into the raw, unadorned, unpretentious language of the streets. #WajngaNyinyi tells Kenyans to stop being stupid and start holding the system accountable.

Urban colonial identity

This is the music culture that Khaligraph grew into, one in which hip hop was broadcast news from the ghetto, the hood. Rappers repped their hoods. Ukoo Flani made Dandora the capital city of Kenya’s hip hop, decked it with rhymes depicting an unforgiving cityscape for adult males and a space of tough love as Zakah na Kah depicted in the eponymic “Dandora L.o.v.e.”

When Khaligraph came of age, he began to identify with Kayole. Kayole 1960. The origins of the estates and route numbers, and the pervasiveness of these bus routes in Kenyan hip hop relate to the vital role recorded music plays in the construction of personal and collective cultural memory. While these bus route numbers evoke nostalgia over the years when the city was efficiently managed, the carrying forward of this colonial heritage in modern hip hop imagination shows the extent to which our collective memory and identity bears the remnants of the colonial state.

The bus route numbers go back to pre-independence years. Overseas Transport Company of London established the first local bus in Kenya in 1934, with a fleet of 13 buses plying 12 routes. The City Council of Nairobi, in 1966, awarded Kenya Bus Service (KBS) a monopoly franchise to run the country’s first formal means of public transport. The heydays of KBS was a demand-driven, efficient and predictable transport system. Fares were regulated.

The design of route numbers was in three dimensions. Route numbers above 100 series were for peri-urban routes, routes below 100 were intra-urban and urban, with the exception of 1, 2, and 3 which were peri-urban. All peri-urban routes terminated at Machakos Bus Station and all buses ending with the 100 Series terminated at the Bus Station. The addition of a letter to a route number signified that there were shorter routes that did not reach the specific destination, or they deviated from the original route then later joined it. Other routes, such as 9 and 6, were circular routes. A vehicle heading to Eastleigh, number 9, would use route 6 when coming back to town. Some of these route numbers have changed, others remain. Route 1 used to be from the City Centre to Dagoretti Corner. Routes 61 and 60, plying the City Centre to Kayole, are no longer in operation, and were changed to Route 1960 and 1961. Hence Kayole 1960.

Nazizi, the First Lady, was the first of Kenya’s MCs to chronicle the route number phenomenon in urban rap through the track “Kenyan Girl, Kenyan Boy”, and the recent “Mat Za Ronga” by Tunji ft Khaligraph Jones follows that age-old feature of Nairobi’s urban rap. Octopizzo, Khaligraph’s longtime rival to Kenya’s King of Rap throne, reps Namba 8 – Kibera.

Music marketplace

Over the past decade, there has been a resurgence of political themes in hip hop albums. Kendrick Lamar’s vignettes capturing the African-American life is the poster political-hip-hop-album for the decade. Juliani’s 2016 album Mtaa Mentality is a definitive entry for politically-conscious albums in Kenya.

For the most part, away from the pioneering hip hop albums of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Kenya’s hip hop scene has been nothing but a graveyard of mix tapes which, while offering a glimpse of spirit and experimentation, deny listeners the beauty of intention, coherence, and completeness. Kenya is home to “superstar” musicians without music albums. Music singles, which had hitherto been known as a precursor to an album, have in most cases been the only output Kenyan fans have received from their musicians.

Given the predominantly club-banger focus of a music single, it is often difficult to chart the trajectory of a musician from the perspective of their thematic concerns. However, the album Testimony 1990 is a condensed piece of work that offers us coherence, a singular thematic focus, and a snapshot of the career progress of the artist.

Sheng, as a practice of moving across languages, has always been the choice for urban youth to resist and to engage in socio-political commentary and protest. But with the breaking down of market boundaries through the dominance of a few US-based music streaming platforms, language is once again becoming a significant indicator for capturing the international market.

For young African artists, the future belongs to those who can blend local languages and the lingua franca with the dominant language of business, in this case English. It is the reason why Tanzania’s Diamond Platnumz, while capturing the local East African market on the back of Swahili lyrics, resorts to English when doing collaborations with American artists such as Rick Ross and Omario. Khaligraph is the evolution of that trend, and it will not be long before he begins hustling for that big collaboration with a major American artist.

The album Testimony 1990 is a condensed piece of work that offers us coherence, a singular thematic focus, and a snapshot of the career progress of the artist.

There is a new legion of internet-born artists, genre-bending productions and visuals, serving digital native fan bases with exciting single tracks. The Gengetone – perhaps the most significant development in Kenyan music in years – is already stealing the airwaves from maturing acts such as Khaligraph, Octopizzo, and King Kaka. The new wave is characterised by explicit content, with song lyrics promoting violence and misogyny, and videos promoting the sexual objectification of women.

However, as writer Barbara Wanjala notes: “Kenyan artists have been experimenting to see what will capture the youth. The contemporary sound landscape runs the whole gamut, from songs that speak about debauchery to conscious lyricists rapping with conviction. Other artists straddle both worlds, producing output that has commercial appeal as well as tracks that are socially responsible.”

It remains to be seen whether, in addition to documenting, socio-politically conscious hip hop can engender political mobilisation and drive political change in Kenya. Perhaps Wakadinali’s “Kuna Siku Youths Wataungana” (2020) – which explicitly calls on youth to organise, mobilise, and take political action – is an encouraging direction for the new decade.

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The African Roots of Cuban Music

By Boima Tucker

In December 2019, Kennedy Ombima, better known by his stage name King Kaka, released a new song called Wajinga Nyinyi (You Fools) that caused ripples nationwide. This incredibly popular song not only sought to speak truth to power, but also highlighted the state of the nation – how it has been captured by endemic corruption, inept governance and noxious ethnic politics. Wajinga Nyinyi was not only bravely rendered, it trended for days, took the country by storm, and excited a deeply frustrated citizenry.

Since its release, it has spawned similar protest songs, with other artists releasing renditions of the song. Although other artists, such as Eric Wainana of Nchi ya kitu kidogo fame (A country of petty corruption), Charles Njagua aka Jaguar of Kigeugeu (hypocrisy), (the artist is today the Jubilee Party MP for Kamukunji constituency in Nairobi County), Gidi Gidi of the Unbwogable (Unbeatable) beat, among others, released popular “protest” songs a while ago, there was something different about Wajinga Nyinyi that caught the attention of Kenyans, especially the youth.

The song highlighted the Jubilee government’s multiple failures, empty promises and its “mortgaging” the country to China through reckless borrowing. Why did this song cause so much hue and cry, yet King Kaka did not speak about anything that we did not know already? What made this song so attention-grabbing and catchy?

First, the song captured a raft of issues that have sadly become a defining feature of the our politics: theft, tribal politics, incompetent leadership, bad religion, bad church, rogue clergy, indecent public behaviour, lack of role models, lack of integrity, youth unemployment, drug and substance abuse, a compromised and ineffective judiciary, poor treatment of teachers and hospital staff, among other ills.

The song highlighted the Jubilee government’s multiple failures, empty promises and its “mortgaging” the country to China through reckless borrowing.

Secondly, and more importantly, the song did not just rap away these issues, but it sought to directly engage Kenyans by calling them out for their apparent foolishness and squarely putting the blame on them. The song blamed Kenyans for perpetually voting in bad leaders based on tribal bigotry and money.

Third, the song urged Kenyans to elect competent leaders so that they can hold them to account through exercising their power of the ballot.

Fourthly, because the song was delivered in the language of the youth and by appropriating simple but popular narratives, it struck a chord and affected the conscience of Kenyan youth, the most disenfranchised and restless constituency.

“I think the song stirred not just our minds, but also our conscience and made us look really foolish,” said Willis Odhiambo, a Nakuru County youth. “The leaders we elect through the politics of manipulation and ‘mtu wetu’ syndrome (the politics of our man) display a condescending attitude towards us the electorate as soon as they have been sworn in. They will then go on a looting spree so I think the song was a call out to all our elected leaders that it is no longer business as usual.”

Odhiambo also said that the song was a wake-up call to the powers that be that “vitu kwa ground ni different” (on the ground, things are different). “The song is a passionate appeal to my generation to vote properly if we are to effect the desired change we so badly need.”

Another youth, Grace Naliaka, said the song called for a non-violent youth revolution, “one that calls us to take our civic duties, to soul search on our future that has been stolen by the old geezers. This song pierced both our personal and collective conscience and for the first time, I thought very seriously about my civic duties. So for me, the song was about us the youth to see beyond tribe and elect leaders of integrity. We must refuse to whine and rap away our frustrations, but take control of our destiny by changing how we vote and who we vote for.” Naliaka observed that the independence generation had messed up the future of the millennials. “By belting out the lyrics, King Kaka had read the riot act to the inept corrupt-ridden Jubilee government.”

I think the song was not just about speaking truth to power; it also called for deep introspection. Given that the Kenyan electoral psychology and sociology is a study in ethnic mobilisation, the lyrics pricked Kenyans where it mattered most.

In the book It’s Our Time to Eat by Michela Wrong, Kenyan politics is characterised as the politics of tribe and belly politics through primitive accumulation of wealth, and by the looting of public coffers. As such, during every election cycle, the electorate goes out to elect leaders based on a tribal matrix.

The status of Kenyan youth, like many youth on the African continent, raises huge concerns for those who care about this large and significant constituency that happens to wield tremendous voting power. Africa is a young continent with a teeming youthful – but deeply frustrated and unemployed – population. Nearly 80 per cent of Kenya’s more than 40 million people are under the age of 35. Yet, a significant majority of the youth in Kenya operate in a hostile environment, where the dominant issues they grapple with include, but are not limited to, unemployment, poverty, unequal opportunities (economic and/or otherwise), ethnic bigotry, marginalisation, HIV/AIDS, drugs and substance abuse, mental health issues, crime and violence.

Coupled with the crippling unemployment is the fact that the average young person in Kenya is a victim of a gerontocratic economy and polity, where the tendency by the government is to give most public jobs to retirees and political cronies. King Kaka derides both President Uhuru Kenyatta and Parliament about this apparent gerontocracy when he says “youth ni Moody at 90 and Gikonyo at 80”.

Moody Awori, a veteran politician born in 1927 who served as Kenya’s ninth Vice President from 2003 to 2009, was recently appointed at the age of 91 to serve on the board of the Sports, Arts and Social Development Fund. He and others like Karuthi Gikonyo and many others who are in their sunset years keep being re-appointed to plump public jobs. The appointment of former Othaya MP Mary Wambui, 69, to chair the National Employment Authority, for example, angered many Kenyan youth, even though a court annulled her appointment on the grounds that she was not qualified for the job.

Decisions on pubic matters that affect youth are therefore made by people who are out of touch with the realities of young people in the 21st century. At best, the political elite pay lip service to the youth question, but more often than not, they tend to treat the youth as outsiders in the decision making process, as a group on permanent hold, waiting to be leaders of tomorrow – a tomorrow that has turned out to be a mirage. And if that tomorrow comes, it only does for the old and the frail, and the already very wealthy.

Coupled with the crippling unemployment is the fact that the average young person in Kenya is a victim of a gerontocratic economy and polity, where the tendency by the government is to give most public jobs to retirees and political cronies.

In the political arena, the youth are, at worst, treated as objects to be manipulated and used or, at best, as junior partners. Often, decisions affecting them are made in their absence; their job is only to comply. The youth’s inability to access power at the centre has led to their exclusion and marginalisation. Because of this exclusion, there is a general sense of hopelessness, restlessness and uneasiness, leading to increased vulnerability.

The Jubilee Party government rode to power in 2013 with a promise to create millions of jobs for the youth. Seven years later, the poor youth have realised they have been played, that their role is to be coerced and manipulated by political henchmen.

The youth are not only perceived as malleable and vulnerable to ethnic machinations, but sadly, also to religious manipulation. It is a public secret that some Kenyan youth have been lured to join religion-inspired terror groups such as Al Shabaab. Their recruitment into these terror groups is often the result of unaddressed historical injustices and grievances, as well as the marginalisation of the youth and victimisation by the security agencies. In a situation where the youth feel neglected and unwanted, religious radicalisation becomes the norm and finds its niche among a terrorised lot that has been denied opportunities.

Politicians eating the youth’s future

According to Godwin Murunga, a, Kenyan historian working for CODESRIA in Dakar, Senegal, the framing of the youth as a risky category is “problematic” because there is compelling evidence of the potential of youth to innovate outside of the state. Murunga says that Kenyan youth operate in an environment full of disparities, where progress and regression alternate in unpredictable ways. He says while there are certain segments of Kenyan society that benefit from the limited economic prosperity enjoyed in Kenya and East Africa, especially in the last one or so decades, these benefits are unevenly distributed.

Even as the Kenyan state has excluded the youth from governance and decision-making platforms, the political elites have continued to treat the youth and the general populace with arrogance and disdain. This is not surprising at all, given that the history of Kenya is one of pork-barrel politics, where the youth are suspended in time – they are told that they are the leaders of tomorrow, not of today. Hence money and resources meant for youth is squandered or redirected elsewhere.

These elites thrive on intimidation and threats to scare away anyone pointing a finger at them. The threat by Governor Anne Mumbi Waiguru to sue King Kaka is the latest example. (In his song, King Kaka wondered why Waiguru was still in office, given that she had presided over the loss of millions of shillings meant for the National Youth Service (NYS) when she was the Devolution Cabinet Secretary.

Tracy Namunyak from Kajiado County points out that state officials thrive in discrediting harassing, intimidating, silencing and issuing threats to their critics. Namunyak says Kenyans could be angry with Waiguru because “she ate our future”.

Rogue clerics who steal from the mouths of babes

Not only are youth manipulated by the political class, they are also manipulated by religious leaders. King Kaka criticises the Kenyan church and its clergy who wield tremendous power in this country and who seek to influence not just government policy, but also the citizenry through subtle coercion and threats of fire and brimstone in hell. The clergy, just like the political elite, is deeply condescending towards the Kenyan public and the youth.

Apostle James Maina Ng’ang’a of Neno Evangelism, who is the epitome of a (Pentecostal) cleric gone rogue, is mentioned in Kaka’s lyrics. His arrogance, sense of entitlement, abusive language, and condescending attitude towards women and youth mirror how politicians treat Kenyans. The artist criticises the clergy and its apparent love of money and equates its greed to that of the political class. Ng’ang’a is brash, rude and reckless. Just like the Kenyan politician, he treats his huge followers with callousness and disdain. Just like the politicians, religious leaders treat Kenyans with madharau (contempt). Ng’anga once asked a church member why she wore cheap sneakers and scolded another for her inability to raise Sh6,000 for her children’s school fees. In one of his latest outbursts, he equated King Kaka to a tout.

A rogue pastor who mirrors Ng’ang’a is Gilbert Deya, who claims to have 36,000 followers in the UK. Deya established the Gilbert Deya Ministries International in 1997. His organisation claims that Deya is able to help infertile, post-menopausal women to conceive through the power of the Holy Spirit and special prayers. These outrageous claims turned out to be a child-trafficking racket.

In 2006, Deya was arrested in Edinburgh, Scotland (where he had moved to in a bid to hide from Interpol) on charges of kidnapping and trafficking of children. He protested his innocence, claiming that the miracles that God performed through him were beyond human understanding and that no man can explain them except God. When he was extradited to Kenya, he was detained for nine months at Kamiti Maximum Prison and then released in May 2018 on a Sh10 million bond.

King Kaka criticises the Kenyan church and its clergy who wield tremendous power in this country and who seek to influence not just government policy, but also the citizenry through subtle coercion and threats of fire and brimstone in hell.

Self-proclaimed Prophet David Edward Owuor, who tells his followers that he is two in one (Elijah and Moses), could rightly be described as Kenya’s spiritual president. Prophet Owuor is a man who loves pomp and power. He is authoritative and has cultivated a personality cult and mystique about him.

More importantly, he is condescending to other Kenyans, be they clergy or otherwise. He is a master of spiritual and emotional manipulation; he often threatens his followers with eternal damnation, death, earthquakes and floods. Prophet Owuor demands absolute adoration from his followers and has created a religious-political personality cult around himself. Any contrary opinion or critic of the mightiest of the mightiest attracts curses, death threats, road accidents and severe illnesses like cancer.

The clergy no longer speaks the language of social justice, of the poor and vulnerable. Religious leaders, just like politicians, treat the youth the same way politicians do. It would seem use-and- dump is their stated policy.

Patriarchy and bedroom politics

In a conservative country like Kenya, political and religious power is the preserve of men. Threats of violence – political, physical and verbal – are not uncommon in the Kenyan public sphere.

For Ng’ang’a, politics is his bedroom, where he has power over the youth and their mothers. He appropriates the patriarchal language of the Bible, colonialism and toxic masculinity. Women’s bodies are sexualised and sex is used to sanctify men’s control over women’s bodies.

By stating to King Kaka that “your mother is my girlfriend”, Ng’ang’a sees women’s place as not just being in the kitchen, but also in his bedroom. If they are not in the kitchen or in the bedroom, then they are in his church, being exorcised of demons and spirit-husbands, who presumably rape women in Ng’ang’a’s fantasies. Even in the underworld, male demons inhibit women bodies, raping them at will, while Ng’ang’a rapes them of their dignity through his toxic theologies of demonic deliverance. The female body is a site of abuse where toxic theologies are constructed. Women’s bodies are sites of violence, patriarchal control and surveillance. Women’s body parts have also been used by Kenyan politicians and men to insult and abuse others. Nearly a decade since the promulgation of the new Kenyan constitution of 2010, MPs are yet to pass the two-thirds gender rule.

By stating to King Kaka that “your mother is my girlfriend”, Ng’ang’a sees women’s place as not just being in the kitchen, but also in his bedroom. If they are not in the kitchen or in the bedroom, then they are in his church, being exorcised of demons and spirit-husbands, who presumably rape women in Ng’ang’a’s fantasies.

In today’s Kenya, religion has become indistinguishable from politics. In the last two general elections, we have witnessed tremendous cooption of the Kenyan clergy by the political class. The class fundraises colossal amounts of money for churches to win legitimation and respectability, while compromising the very clergy by stifling their voice.

Deputy President William Ruto, who has variously proclaimed himself to be a born again Christian, has caused quite a stir through his frequent church fund-raising activities, where he has donated humungous amounts of money to different churches. In many such events and during electioneering periods, politicians scramble for prayers and votes, mostly in churches. Images of President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy being prayed for and anointed with special oil in churches have become the norm in Kenyan political, religious and social scenes.

The rise of protest music among youth

While the youth are being marginalised in the political arena and in church circles, they have turned to reclaiming the creative and performing arts to protest their exclusion. Through the power of hip- hop lyrics, contemporary songs and poetic music, the youth are seeking not just to contest their marginalisation, but to also challenge, educate, mobilise and organise – to hold the political class and government functionaries, as well as religious leaders, to account through popular entertainment and dramatised narratives.

Protest music has long been recognised as an art form used by the youth to not only fight for their rights and existence, but also to reclaim their voices and to directly appeal to the people’s conscience. Robert Kyalunganyi, aka Bobi Wine, the MP for Kyaddondo East constituency in Kampala, Uganda, has used his talents as a musician to propel himself right into the centre of Ugandan politics. Today, the long-serving President Yoweri Museveni has to contend with Bobi’s soaring popularity in politics and across social circles in Uganda. He has proved to be an irritating itch to Museveni.

While the youth are being marginalised in the political arena and in church circles, they have turned to reclaiming the creative and performing arts to protest their exclusion…and to also challenge, educate, mobilise and organise…

Bobi Wine has done this by giving the youth a practical medium and a new space to express disaffection with the current status quo in Uganda’s political establishment. He offers a critique of power using a language that is accessible, simple and appealing to the youth constituency.

Popular music has the ability to not just prick the powers that be, but also to awaken the consciousness of the citizenry. The youth are carving out spaces for civic engagement outside of the state and church. They have been using social media as spaces for political and social mobilisation.

As the church and government aficionados’ minds remain colonial and static, the youth are moving ahead to recreate and reclaim spaces for themselves. The church, stuck in its colonial framework, is no longer out to save souls and fight for the vulnerable. It doesn’t speak the language of the downtrodden. Today it speaks the language of the oppressor and brutal governments. It is part and parcel of the predatory political class.

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The African Roots of Cuban Music

By Boima Tucker

Somi is running late. It is the Sunday morning after the February 2019 presidential elections that saw President Muhammadu Buhari returned to office and Lagos has endured a wet weekend. The roads have become flooded with rainwater escaping out of blocked drains, carrying with it styrofoam, plastic, non-recyclable waste and reusable debris. Traffic is what results. Traffic of short tempers and selfish driving, traffic of potholes and murky water, traffic that validates Fela’s claim in his tune Go Slow, traffic that traps Somi in an Uber taxi from where she sends a text message, “I am running late.”

I find her courtesy rather unusual. My experience of artistes in Nigeria is that being late for appointments is typical and not showing up is the rule. Somi apologises effusively when she finally arrives, hurriedly walking in, looking gorgeous in her flowing blue Adire gown.

“You just walk around and everyone is in their best and they just seem to try and find courage to face the next week. I introduce my song, with words about a woman who dared to dream, despite having a difficult life”, Somi says in a restaurant full of people in their Sunday best.

We are at the Cactus Restaurant on Victoria Island, an upscale diner popular for its Sunday brunch. The clientele is mostly elaborately dressed Christians just from church; middle-aged, bespectacled, brocade-wearing men sporting Yoruba caps and holding teenage daughters by the hand, mothers in George or Velvet or Ankara and elaborately styled headgear, strutting with the kind of confidence associated with ownership, bespectacled teenage sons, gangly and pimply, walking in their wake.

Somi lives in New York. She is visiting Lagos for pre-production meetings for her seventh album, recording rough demos and workshopping ideas with Cobhams Asuquo, the producer with whom she made her iconic fourth album.

Her seventh album is yet to be titled, but she says it is in conversation with her stage play, Dreaming Zenzile, which is about the life, the times and the music of the late South African singer and activist, Miriam Makeba.

“My new album is in conversation with my play,” Somi says as she flips the menu, considering breakfast options. She makes her order and asks for extra avocados on the side.

Somi is no stranger to Cactus. She is also no stranger to Lagos. She had first been invited to Lagos in 2010 by the organisers of the Lagos Jazz Festival, but they were tentative about their dates—their major obstacle being the upcoming 50th anniversary of Nigeria’s Independence celebrations.

By sheer happenstance, Somi was visiting friends in Lagos when the organisers of the Lagos Jazz Festival finally settled on dates, but the timing was still off. Lagos would be deprived of the magic of Somi and her five-man band but, providentially, Somi would comb the city on her own terms, flitting between working class and upscale areas, the Mainland and the Island, and falling in love with Yaba, an iconic part of the megacity.

Another opportunity to visit Lagos came soon enough; a seven-week International Art Residency at Kwara State University in Ilorin, in collaboration with New York University. Somi had been recommended by Professor Awam Amkpa of the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, who had remembered how fond she was of Lagos.

“I came back to teach in Ilorin for seven weeks since that was all the time I had available. I remember looking up Ilorin and it was like a million, two million people . . . I love the idea of going to an African city that is not really like the centre,” Somi reminisces. She planned on spending three days a week in Ilorin and four in Lagos. To her dismay, her teaching at Ilorin was sabotaged by incessant union strikes. “They kept going on strike and I taught once a week and I was to teach there for seven weeks. So I felt like I didn‘t get to spend time with the students as we all anticipated but it was still lovely. And you know at some point after much thinking, I decided to stay.”

Somi stayed in Nigeria for 18 months. She wrote, workshopped and recorded the songs that would become her fourth album, The Lagos Music Salon.

I experienced Somi’s The Lagos Music Salon (TLMS) on Ethiopian Airlines’ inflight entertainment in 2015. Cruising many miles above sea level from Lagos to Addis Ababa, I happened upon this album named after the city I call home, Lagos.

Lagos is a conundrum of a city. Lagos is where the dreams of most Nigerians berth, optimistic that they shall come to pass. But like most cities, Lagos also engenders disappointment in the long run. Dreams may take their time to fruition, and so the citizens of Lagos are best classified thus: those who have made it and those who are in the process of making it.

The cover art on the TLMS album is of an elegant black woman wearing an Ankara dress leaning against shabby wooden panelling. The art already speaks to the Lagos characteristic of yoking style to squalor; and so I listened.

Cruising many miles above sea level from Lagos to Addis Ababa, I happened upon this album named after the city I call home, Lagos

Every song on TLMS keys into the Lagos experience. Eighteen songs lasting a bit beyond an hour. The impression is an eternal one. One is in awe of the possibilities of powerful vocal cords and intricately curated music exploring the boundless complexity of a city that over twenty million people call home.

TLMS is a contemporary album in conversation about the city, but within the ethos of the city’s past as well as her musical traditions. Following a brisk introduction, the album pays homage to juju music—the soundtrack of the city through the 70s—with the vibrant up-tempo love song Love Juju #1 teasingly conflating the existing misconception about the nomenclature of that variant of palm- wine music. Juju here could mean the music whose name is possibly derived from the onomatopoeic Yoruba verb “to throw”, or an intense romantic affection that could be the consequence of hypnosis. Somi plays both sides with talking drums and the steel pedal guitar.

Every song on the album leans into jazz, but this is jazz music out of its comfort zone, in constant collision with newer interpretations and African languages. Somi is so fascinated by the way life happens in Lagos and her panoramic gaze eschews class, sex, gender and occupation; she is inexhaustibly preoccupied with what it means to be every kind of human in Lagos.

The art already speaks to the Lagos characteristic of yoking style to squalor; and so I listened

Listen to Somi’s Brown Round Things and you are thrown into the devastating beauty of Lagos nights. Accompanied by Ambrose Akinmusire’s piquant trumpet notes, the song knifes through the night and beautifies the nocturnal mundanity of the sex work that animates certain aspects of the city. Admiralty Way, Lekki. Sanusi Fafunwa, Victoria Island. And Allen Avenue, the Mecca of the Lagos Red Light District. The album’s interludes and skits are byte-sized aural delights of certain sounds characteristic of Lagos. Yet, the most accomplished of these songlets is Somi’s visitation of Nelly Uchendu’s Love Nwantintin which enjoys the gospel feel of the acapella group In His Image—a sultry tribute to Lagos by way of the River Niger.

The victory of Somi’s album lies in how it curates Lagos’ sounds and kinetics in a manner that is both recognisable and satisfactory. Four years since its release, this album is still the most extensive jazz album detailing the Lagos experience and the most original interpretation of the city since Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

Google Somi and you are likely to fall upon another Somi, a Korean-Canadian singer and songwriter who broke out through Produce 101, an M-Net survival reality show.

This Somi’s full name is Laura Kabasomi Kakoma whom Wikipedia describes as an “American singer, songwriter and actor of Rwandan and Ugandan heritage”.

Every song on the album leans into jazz, but this is jazz music out of its comfort zone, in constant collision with newer interpretations and African languages

Somi was born in Illinois to a Rwandan academic father and a Ugandan mother. Her family would relocate to Zambia when she was aged three. In the late 80s, her father took up a professorship at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she spent the rest of her childhood. Somi studied Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Illinois and has a postgraduate degree in Performance Studies from the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

“Writing was always a private art for me as a child and I‘ve always been a writer of some sort, but it is private, more like catharsis”, Somi says, adding that, “Singing too was a private thing. Like a lot of people, I used to sing as a child and then when my family and I moved to the States, I experienced culture shock and racism. I had an experience with a teacher who was so hostile to me and she shut me up when I was to present a piece I had won an award for and that kind of affected me . . . She was like ‘are you reading or not, just know no one even cares’ . . . I couldn’t sing publicly. Which for me is another reason I decided to play the cello, as I just needed an outlet that didn‘t involve me singing.”

In 2003, Somi released her first album in New York called Eternal Motive, an 11-track album with a monochrome portrait of Somi on the cover. The internet has all but forgotten these first steps but a review of a later work describes it as “electric soul jazz”, a nod at Somi’s love for genre-blending and bending.

Four years later, she independently released Red Soil in My Eyes. Jeff Tamarkin of the All Music Review glowingly remarks, Red Soil in My Eyes is all elegance and awe, and attempting to reduce Somi’s pan-globalism and command of her artistic environment to a single genre or purpose would be a fruitless endeavour. She skates easily between worlds, touching on both smooth and raucous neo-soul, nuanced jazz expression and more than a dollop of East African tradition until something else altogether emerges.”

Ingele, a Swahili song that was a finalist in the world music category of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, is a moving delight that touches the core of anyone who knows that music is indeed the undertow of the soul. But Somi did not set out to become a Jazz singer: “I wasn‘t setting out to be a jazz singer. I just wanted to be a songwriter and poet. I’ll say I am very inspired by jazz regardless”. Perhaps Somi meant that she had a crush on Jazz and once the inspiration came, it was impossible to resist.

After the release of Red Soil in My Eyes, Somi’s father fell ill and was diagnosed with cancer.

“For me, it put my work on hold and I had to travel to my parent‘s home in Illinois to have time off. It was really a hard time for me at that point and writing the album.”

The songs she wrote through this dark period would become If The Rain Comes First, her third studio album released by Obliqsound at about the time her father passed away.

“It‘s actually an album about how we perceive the challenges in our lives, and in the West, the rain is seen as a negative thing. Where we are from, my mother always talked about how the rain was a blessing.”

The eponymous song achieves an auditory equivalent of petrichor, the sweet smell that comes with the rainfall that Somi sings about. And beyond the varying perceptions of what rain seems to signify, If The Rain Comes First feels like a rite of passage, a washing away, if you will, of pain and grief. This quality spreads throughout the meditative album which also features South African jazz vocalist, trumpeter and flugelhorn player, Hugh Masekela—fondly called Uncle Hugh by Somi—on the hypnotic Enganjyani, which means “most beloved” in Rutooro, Somi’s mother’s language.

All About Jazz qualifies the achievement of her third album thus: “With If the Rains Come First, Somi’s songwriting has taken on a new sophistication and depth. Surrounded by a cast of virtuosic collaborators who understand precisely where she’s going and how to get there, Somi burrows deeply into her words and ultimately something transcendent emerges.”

Somi returned to teach at Kwara State University, Nigeria, before the release of her fourth album, a live album titled Somi Live at Jazz Standard. A 10-track compilation of her songs plus covers of Abbey Lincoln’s Should’ve Been and Bob Marley’s Waiting in Vain, Somi’s live album was recorded over two days at New York City’s Jazz Standard.

“Raw at Jazz Standard might have been a better title, since the hour-long performance so vibrantly captures the unfiltered, unvarnished Somi freed from studio wizardry,” writes Christopher Loudon. Eight years after its release, that experience of being transposed into the past, into the presence of that emotive music stirred by pitch-perfect instrumentation and the majesty of Somi’s vocals and East African languages still happens.

“I actually didn‘t come to Lagos to write a new album, I was actually trying to work on another album”, says Somi. Trust Lagos to wrestle any competition out of your mind. Lagos returned Somi to a place of poetry and not just the final visual poem, Shine Your Eye, that closes The Lagos Music Salon album; a good number of the songs that made the album began their journeys as poems.

On the evening of Sunday June 3, 2012, Flight 992, a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 aircraft belonging to Dana Air and carrying 153 souls from Abuja to Lagos, crashed into buildings in Lagos while attempting an emergency landing. All the passengers and crew on the aircraft and six people on the ground perished.

Somi wrote a poem that became Last Song, for a woman she had fleetingly encountered at a jazz festival a week before the plane crash.

“I met this young lady, we became friends, and I got to know she also just moved back, as a single woman in Lagos . . . I kept thinking about her and sadly we didn‘t exchange numbers . . . So on that Sunday, I was hanging out with some friends when one of them got news that she was among the people that died in the plane crash.”

Last Song is Somi’s tribute to an acquaintance she wished she had known better. It is a poignant re- imagination of how fleeting moments could pass innocuously into the void, how existence is a transient thing, how goodbyes could be ephemeral or eternal.

Somi’s vision often imagines a singular person as opposed to a herd of people. But once she has achieved that emotional resonance with one person, the bigger picture becomes easier to populate.

“After I lost my dad and I didn’t feel understood by the people around me, I decided to take a break and I chose Lagos . . . I had a lot of friends in Lagos from Nigerian friends abroad.”

From around 2010 a lot of Nigerians in the diaspora had returned on account of the prospects of the booming economy. While in Lagos, Somi went around with a digital recorder documenting everything—conversations, traffic sounds, protests and even her own laughter.

Lagos returned Somi to a place of poetry and not just the final visual poem, Shine Your Eye, that closes The Lagos Music Salon album; a good number of the songs that made the album began their journeys as poems

When she realised that a body of work was in the offing, she began to workshop the new material. Azu Nwagbogu, the founder of African Artists Foundation, then located at Raymond Njoku, Ikoyi, graciously provided the space where Somi began to do a monthly series, showcasing songs with a band strung together by Cobhams Asuquo. A good number of those songs found their way into The Lagos Music Salon.

Somi’s sixth album, Petite Afrique, is to Harlem, New York, what The Lagos Music Salon is to Lagos.

Harlem, a historic place, populated by Africans and African-Americans alike, becomes a field for a sonic survey. Somi, the vocalist, anthropologist and virtuoso performer hits closer to home this time, even if the scope of her theme has grown wider.

Petite Afrique means “Little Africa” and it is a tribute to a cohort of African immigrants, mostly from Senegal, who reside on New York’s 116th Street. Much as it is about migrants, it is also about the implicit and explicit tension between Africans and African-Americans as is manifest in the kind of conversations they have with each other. The myriad of issues that populate these discussions include xenophobia, islamophobia as well as gentrification—but Somi’s powers shine through in how her message melds seamlessly into the music.

Speaking about how the album came about, Somi says, “It started in Harlem, I think, after The Lagos Music Salon. I lived in Harlem for about ten years . . . Then there was this friction between Africans and African-Americans, and the whole idea of gentrification and the need for unity between these two. So naturally for me, I felt a need to connect with the people of Harlem, having stayed there for a while, so Petite Afrique was my own way of giving back to Harlem . . .”

What Somi achieves in fifty-two minutes and fourteen songs is a triumphant exploration of the black experience. Little wonder then that Petite Afrique received the Outstanding Jazz Album award at the 49th National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Image Awards.

Somi’s career has gone way past her brief stay in Lagos but the city will remain a critical reference point in her career. The Lagos Music Salon changed her career and Lagos will always remain home to her.

As she says, “I love New York, but the thing in Lagos is, if you can make it in Lagos, you can make it anywhere, the city is hard, but when you show up for the city, the city shows up for you.”

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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The African Roots of Cuban Music

By Boima Tucker

Tandale estate is a solid flood-prone flat pan stacked amidst patterned limestone shacks at the heart of Dar es Salaam, just north of Kwa Mtogole and south of Kijitonyama and 7 kilometres from Dar’s famous Coco Beach. It’s also home to a former clothes vendor, Naseeb Abdul Juma and Raheem Rummy Nanji from Iringa. Raheem, a budding musician, would alongside Tanzanian youthful celebrity Hakeem 5 earn the Nyamwezi-sounding moniker Vijana Sharobaro from the versatile all-time hit-maker Dully Sykes, who then worked under Dhahabu Records. In christening them Sharobaro in the 2000s, Sykes, then a popular bongo musician, seemed to have infused their budding careers with long-sought street cred just as the industry panned out to new sounds and styles.

The clothes vendor Naseeb was meanwhile stuck in blue-collar trade, first in freelance photography, then as a filling attendant, and also had a stint in gambling, while pursuing the ever-elusive money for studio fees. Meanwhile Raheem, now famously known as Bob Junior, would go on to establish Sharobaro Records, a hole-in-the-wall recording studio built for its time, and weirdly successful for its stature.

Back in Tandale, Naseeb’s dalliance with talent manager Chizo Mapene didn’t yield much professional or economic outcomes despite lots of initial prospects after which Naseeb hooked up with producer Msafiri Peter, aka Papaa Misifa, in 2009. Naseeb linked up again with Raheem of Sharobaro Records from where he recorded his first major hit, Nenda Kamwambie. The year 2010 looked promising, and with this debut album, the young Naseeb was introduced to Tanzanians and the East African region.

The album is mushy, existential, soulful, with heart-tugging reflections. It is borderline whiny, yet relatable and includes songs like Kamwambie, a dedication to his unrequited love, and Nitarejea sung alongside the ailing star Hawa. The latter is about a love that his foray into the city for work won’t quench despite the distance.

With the three hits – Kamwambie, Mbagala and Nitarejea – Naseeb, now known by his stage name Diamond Platnumz, harnessed the supple fluency of the local Kiswahili dialect and the poetic idioms of street slang to hog the limelight and introduce himself to the world.

In a region where the wider creative economy largely apes – and where possible solicits – the stature, money and alliances with global (and mostly American hip hop) for traction, Diamond Platnumz’s success has defied the odds both in style, sound, reach and influence. It’s in his 2017 interview with Forbes magazine where he would credit the traction that enabled him to consistently cash in on his musical talent as the mark that transitioned his music from a passion to a career.

No doubt his ability to craft a cultural Bongo Flava moment owes credence to legends like the 1990s Radio DJ Mike Mhagama. Mhagama coined the term Bongo Flava as a distinctive buzzword for the yet-to-be-defined musical genre that arose after the advent of private radio stations in Tanzania in the mid-1990s. Bongo Flava originated in Dar and is derived from a variety of musical genres, including American hip hop, reggae, R&B, afrobeat, and traditional Swahili musical styles, such as Taraab. The phrase, which was meant to delineate Tanzanian hip hop from American hip hop, anchored itself in the country’s showbiz lexicon as a tell-apart and defining tag for Tanzanian pop.

With the three hits – Kamwambie, Mbagala and Nitarejea – Naseeb, now known by his stage name Diamond Platnumz, harnessed the supple fluency of the local Kiswahili dialect and the poetic idioms of street slang to hog the limelight and introduce himself to the world.

Naseeb’s best contribution to the East African artistic scene is through his WCB Wasafi Records platform, for which the wider public has rewarded the company monetarily and brand-wise due to its astute combination of edgy production, track-for-track hits, balanced quality music, and commercial success. These, coupled with entrepreneurial vision, and unyielding versatility, reminiscent of Bigg’s Roc-a-fella or Irv Gotti’s Murder Inc inevitably centred Wasafi as an East African cultural project.

The 2012 Lala Salama album shifted the recording company from soulful and heart-felt tunes to a flashier Afropop that saw the label pan its wings and doggedly pursue partnerships with Africa-wide celebrities and global brands such as Ishmael ‘Omarion’, and American hip hop star Rick Ross.

Back in Bongo, the musical fan base and their gladiatorial instincts fuelled supremacy wars akin to the imagined rivalry between Ronaldo-Messi in football, or Dar musicians’ Dudu Baya-Mr. Nice’s tiff. The online infractions saw the Wasafi Records founder Naseeb aka Diamond unwittingly pitted against his fellow star and erstwhile rival Ali Kiba. None seemed too pleased by the fan base warfare, which they’ve repeatedly admitted they are unable to quell or contain.

Lizzer Era

Diamond’s 2013 performance in Burundi not only linked the Wasafi founder to Burundian star Lolilo, but also led to a chance encounter with the then Burundi-based influential producer, Kigoma, born Siraj Khamees and stage-named Lizzer Classic.

When Diamond started Wasafi around 2014 – the origins of which came in the midst of a fast-rising career – the Tanzanian music scene had hit a lull after the heydays of Matonya, Mr. Nice and Ray C. His creative and business acumen seems to have chanced upon the realisation that the market yearned for a new sound and style.

From the get-go, reservations arose regarding Lizzer’s sampling of Burundian sounds into Tanzania’s Bongo Flava music. Lizzer, who had fled the 2010 state-sponsored electoral clashes in Bujumbura to Kigoma, was unrelenting and convinced there was place in the Tanzanian market for an updated version of Bongo Flava. He would take his first shot with Rayvanny’s Kwetu, a mushy- tinged serenade whose popularity gave legitimacy to Lizzer’s cross-border musical style.

In the working partnership between Lizzer and Diamond, a rising star met international experience; a mercurial duo akin to the then young Shawn Carter’s co-directorship with the steely Kareem “Biggs” Burke, and the colourful Damon Dash back in 1995.

Wasafi’s rise, like any other cultural moment, exists at the confluence of historical accidents, chance encounters, demand for new sounds, and huge individual effort just at the point where Dar’s audio- visual culture boomed, primarily on YouTube and Vimeo. As Odipodev clarified, the combination of local relatable content, proliferation of smartphones, and YouTube algorithms often helps generate a self-perpetuating model of proliferation and popularity onto what the viewers have already deemed to be superior content.

Lizzer, in his interviews with Bernard Mpangala at the WCB Wasafi offices, modestly remarked that their outsized commercial and cultural success wasn’t anywhere near monopoly, given that lots of their musical stars still work with other producers besides them in producing their albums.

Even then, he’d opine that at least 50 per cent of the album would be produced by Wasafi. Lizzer attributes his updating of Bongo Flava music from its widely varied days in the 2000s to the influence of Korean and Chinese music, of which he is an ardent fan.

The Korean influence on the updated Bongo Flava sounds can no doubt be gleaned from the storylines, the colourful Oriental dressing, and the unsynchronised dance moves of the Korean pop crew BTS in their hit song DNA. The same can be seen in the Chinese pop hits in the strain of NGirl’s Goddess choo choo choo and the Chinese songstress Feng Timo’s sleek improvisations and animated dramatisations, with their parallels in Salome, Zigo, or Mwanza Nyegezi.

Wasafi’s rise, like any other cultural moment, exists at the confluence of historical accidents, chance encounters, demand for new sounds, and huge individual effort just at the point where Dar’s audio-visual culture boomed, primarily on YouTube and Vimeo.

Lizzers’ signature tune Ayo Lizzer is a drop by Diamond edited to obscure his easily recognisable voice. Lizzer claims the tune allows the production team to dissuade artistes from mentioning him in the lyrics while still acknowledging his creative contribution.

Lizzer’s career’s steep ascend in late 2000s in Burundi drove him up the ranks and roped in big regional artistes like Sat B, Big Fizzo, Lolilo, Rally Joe and Emery Sun. Even then, it’s Rayvanny’s Kwetu that earned Lizzer acceptance in Tanzania, and the updated rendition of Saida Karoli’s Salome that set him up as a new sound in East African production.

Let’s make money

The Wasafi ecosystem hit its golden age from 2015, with Rajab ‘Harmonize’ Kahali, their newest signee chugging hit after hit with dizzying commercial success. Then came Mwanajuma ‘Queen Darleen’ and Raymond Shaban ‘Rayvanny’ in 2016, and Richard Martin ‘Rich Mavoko’, Juma Idd ‘Lava lava’ and Yusuph Kilungi ‘Mbosso’’s hits in 2017. Wasafi became a Foxconn of music in which insane work schedules blended with keen and demanding producers, and ever inventive back stage casts.

Director Diamond, as well as managers Babu Tale, Sallam SK, Said Fella, Joseph King, and producers Lizzer and Tuddy Thomas capitalised on the new sounds to feed a frenzied and ever- expanding fan base, while revitalising production wherever their music was heard. The rising popularity, combined with commercial astuteness and a growing band of talented artistes, saw the label dabble in top-selling ringtones, pricey and sold-out concerts, Wasafi Festival tours, royalties, product lines, club and TV appearances, and brand deals.

The Tanzanian record label pursued a multimedia model with the music streaming service wasafi.com launched first, while Wasafi TV and Wasafi FM further widened their reach and offering. This Wasafi ecosystem’s unprecedented savviness also earned them brand endorsements from Vodacom, Red Gold, DSTV, and Coca Cola.

The litany of commercial streams rewarded their work ethic and ingenuity. And while Wasafi’s market capitalisation is fuzzy and its transactional records remain inaccessible, Diamond’s estimated $4.5 million net worth is astronomical by any measure.

Curiously, the Wasafi ecosystem’s numerous rags to riches stories within its ranks is easily traceable to a policy of working with talents from poor backgrounds, something the directors admit to be true and deliberate. The ecosystem’s big acts, Konde boy Harmonize, Chibu Dangote Diamond, and Vannyboy have morphed from bootstrapping a half a decade ago to commanding fees in excess of $10,000 to $70,000 per show and earning upwards of $25,000 from streaming apps monthly.

This outsized influence has come with its own fair share of challenges. For instance, Baraza la Sanaa Tanzania (BASATA) took a moralisng stance against the artistes’ song Mwanza over what it dubbed explicit content. In 2018 BASATA put a leash on two of the label’s defiant big stars, RayVanny and Diamond, who in the end called for a truce owing to the risk of commercial losses that came with the ban. Mr Kayanda, the agency’s interim executive secretary, brought down the full force of regulatory coercion, which elicited the age-old question of who deems what is explicit and triggered a moral debate in artistic expression. BASATA’s move amounted to predictable flexing, given President Magufuli’s wider crackdown on dissent, including clamping down on media personalities and political dissidents.

The litany of commercial streams rewarded their work ethic and ingenuity. And while Wasafi’s market capitalisation is fuzzy and its transactional records remain inaccessible, Diamond’s estimated $4.5 million net worth is astronomical by any measure.

Despite lacking a clear social cause, the Wasafi ecosystem has latched onto Dar es Salaam’s goal of providing 100,000 additional desks in its primary school classes as part of plugging the 1.4 million desks deficit. Their overall social cause and focus has, however, not been noteworthy outside of scouting for talent among the lowest socio-economic strata. The politically-conscious musician Roma Mkatoliki of the Rostam crew, who is a former teacher, and a dozen other artistes have also jumped onto the donation bandwagon.

The waning years

WCB Wasafi’s ecosystem has managed to inspire a cultural moment, and an ardent fan base, and has surpassed the mere tag of a label or a brand. However, for this ecosystem, achieving collective success has been the easy part while handling individual flaws, infighting, substantial talents, and an ever-growing team and fame has proved to be a challenge.

Rommy Jones, the founder’s kin, who is also Wasafi’s DJ, reckons that the artistes’ love lives and their relations with the female fan base are the main source of trouble for the organisation. In recent months, Diamond publicly fell out with his partner Zari Hassan and hooked up with video vixen Hamisa Mobetto, and then moved on to Tanasha Donna, while Rayvanny has a long talked-about dalliance with a Kenyan socialite.

Meanwhile, Harmonize dumped his lover after an alleged romp with a Caucasian female acquaintance. Rommy faced sexual assault allegations during Diamond’s April 2016 tour of Sweden, which led to Diamond cutting short his performances.

Besides trouble with the national arts council (BASATA), artistes’ exit from the recording firm could either be viewed as them having grown too big for one platform, or as the road to the demise of what’s still the most popular and competitive recording company in the region.

The record company first sign-up, Harmonize, has exited the label while the prodigious Richard Rayvanny is allegedly also on his way back to his former Tip Top Records, citing dissatisfaction with his contract. Mbosso’s manager, Ms. Sandra Brown, checked out, and so did Mr. Joel Vicent Joseph, who complained of poor pay and workplace harassment from one of the big name singers.

In a move reminiscent to Roc A Fella’s 2002 fallout in which Shawn ‘Jay Z’ Carter and co-director Damon Dash, while enjoying huge creative success, were grappling with behind-the-scenes squabbles, Rayvanny felt relegated to third place as Harmonize took second spot.

Mtwara-born Harmonize, it is said, was unhappy with Chibu’s public revelations of his personal matters. He was also displeased with regards to his contractual obligations, which eventually led him to exit and form the Konde Gang label. WCB Wasafi’s ecosystem has managed to inspire a cultural moment and an ardent fan base, and has surpassed the mere tag of a label or a brand. However, for this ecosystem, achieving collective success has been the easy part while handling individual flaws, infighting, substantial talents, and an ever-growing team and fame has proved to be a challenge.

Because it is still patronised by great talent managers Babu Tale and Tudd Thomas, and producer Lizzer’s innovative knack, as well as a huge financial chest, and street smarts, the Wasafi ecosystem may survive much longer than the naysayers imagine. Through this ecosystem, Naseeb, the boy from Tandale, has managed to morph local music into likable and popular music, earning it both regional appeal and international stature.

The record label’s rise though has put it at crosshairs with Clouds Entertainment, who though coming in later into the Tanzanian arts scene after DJ Mhagama had launched Bongo Flava, views itself as the bona fide curator of Tanzania’s youthful cultural revolution. The late Ruge Muhataba and Joe Kusaga seemed unamused by the rise of a new media ecosystem outside of their patronage and capacity. This worsened after the altercation between a Wasafi staffer and two journalists from Clouds Media in February 2018 after which Cloud banned all Wasafi music and arts from their platforms.

The ultimate test for the five-year-old Wasafi platform will be managing Harmonize’s transition from the ecosystem since he co-owned Zoom Production Inc with Diamond. Zoom is one of the biggest cogs in the ecosystem and in charge of most of its video productions.

As they straddle between sizeable successes, an insatiable fan base and internal fallouts, the Wasafi ecosystem, ironically, risks getting cannibalised by a cultural moment that it was instrumental in creating.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

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