AfricaIs aCountry

Not Your Parents' Music

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Not Your Parents' Music

By
Sean Jacobs

There’s more to Kenyan popular music than Just a Band (even CNN’s David MacKenzie has taken notice of the band’s viral activity) as Chief Boima at Ghetto Bassquake has shown recently. He has been posting videos and links–based on a recent visit there and with reference to sites such as Get Mziki–of some of the vibrant music scene in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. The production is high quality, so is the videos.  This is not your parents’ music.

Like the vocalist Dela, in the video below, performing “Ulivvo” (from her debut album “Paukwa”):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vS77MSAo20&w=480&h=295]

Then there’s Sauti Sol. Here with “Sunny Days”:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8rmMPSVfKU&w=480&h=295]

And Stan, another artist who plays real instruments:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCqgCVbpYqA&w=480&h=295]

Or Muthoni the Drummer Queen (with my favorite track,  “Mikono Kwenye Hewa”):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XWbFrwo8Mk&w=480&h=295]

The smooth (in Boima’s words) kapuka–that’s the genre–of Marya featuring Colonel Mustapha on “Hey Baby”:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwrgJzD2Jkk&w=480&h=295]

Finally, here’s a snippet of spoken word from Insect (real name Kelvin Kiprono) that puts into perspective the Kenya these young people have inherited from their parents:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye9MXK9582w&w=480&h=295]

Via Ghetto Bassquake

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

An annual awakening

In the 1980s, the South African arts collective Vakalisa Art Associates reclaimed time as a tool of social control through their subversive calendars.

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.