Driving north from Nairobi on the new super-highway, the
Kilimambogo hills rises slowly ahead of us. My travel companion is
Emmanuel Mwendwa, who has spent the past two years researching,
licencing, collecting old photos and writing liner notes for the
Kenya Special compilation recently released by Soundway Records.
Emmanuel talks about this intriguing archaeological music venture, described in a
Guardian review
as a "fabulously entertaining history lesson", and the challenges in
tracking down the musicians featured on the anthology. He managed to
find almost all of them, or their families, with the exception of the
much-fabled Slim Ali of the Hodi Boys band. Rumour has it that Ali is
somewhere in the Emirates, but not even his relatives are sure.
We are heading to Thika to meet one of the musicians Emmanuel did
locate, the legendary Daniel Kamau Mwai, or just DK as he is popularly
known. DK has three tracks on the
Kenya
Special collection and is also featured on the cover of the anthology.
He tells me the cover photo was taken at a concert at the Bata Shoe
Company in Limuru in 1979. His extraordinary sideburns were already his
trademark then and 34 years later they still impress.
The Nairobi melting pot
"Kenya has always had one of the most diverse and intoxicating musical cultures in
Africa.
Yet the immense talent is rarely acknowledged internationally and
seldom given the resources it needs to flourish," writes Doug Paterson
in the Rough Guide's
world music
bible. The Kenyan music heritage has far from received the same kind of
attention that has been directed towards vintage Ethiopian, Congolese
and west African music in the past decade. That is until now, at least,
as Kenya Special does an incredible effort in documenting a golden era
in Kenyan music during the 60s and 70s.
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| DK Mawi (second left) with fellow musicians and his car in the
1970s. "I wasted a lot of money on cars in those days," DK says.
Photograph: Fusion Magazine archives
|
The compilation also
highlights the unique and innovative relationship between Kenyan,
Congolese, Zambian and Tanzanian musicians in this period when the
finest bands of especially DR Congo (then Zaire) performed and even
settled in Nairobi. But both DK and Emmanuel emphasise that Kenya
Special is only scratching the surface. There are many more musical
treasures to be rediscovered in Kenya.
We are meeting DK at the Blue Post Hotel – Thika's grand old lady
located where the Chania and Tahika rivers meet to form the twin Thika
and Chania Falls. The hotel's history dates back to 1908 where it was
built as a stopover for the white settlers living further north and
travelling back and forth to Nairobi. DK has performed at the Blue Post
numerous times, the last being the night his mother died in 2011. Today
the music coming out of the hotel radio is 80s US pop, and DK and
Emmanuel grumble about radio stations stifling the growth of indigenous
music as DJs demand higher and higher payments to give songs airplay.
Today
is the 31 May 2013, and it has been exactly half a century since DK
first time took the stage on 1 June 1963, the day known in Kenya as
Madaraka – when the country attained internal self-rule from the UK,
preceding the full independence in December the same year. DK explains
how everybody on Madaraka day was drunk from a full day of celebrations.
His three older brothers were supposed to play a concert in their
hometown of Gatanga, a few miles from Thika, but none of them were in a
condition to perform. Instead 15-year-old DK took the stage and played
to the surprise of everybody present. "I had been watching my brothers
play, and when they were out of the house I used to take one of their
guitars and practice without them knowing about it. They had told me to
focus on my school, not to play music," he says.
Making benga mainstream
After
his improvised debut, DK continued playing in the villages around
Thika, although it was another five years before he released his first
recordings. He had written a letter to the state-run Kenya Broadcasting
Corporation (then known as Voice of Kenya) who referred him to the
renowned producer David Amunga, who agreed to record and release his
music. Amunga only paid his artists pennies, something that made him
unpopular among many musicians of the time. However, DK carries no hard
feelings. "I respected him. He played an important part in making me
DK," he says.
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|
Slim Ali and friends in the studio. Photograph: Soundway Records
|
DK describes his music as mix of benga and rumba. In
the introduction to Kenya Special, Doug Paterson describes how benga,
Kenya's unique contribution to Afro-pop, spread from its Luo origins
near Lake Victoria to the rest of the country in the late 60s and early
70s. Soon bands throughout the country were playing their own versions.
The Kalambya Boys' Kivelenge song feature on Kenya Special being a great
sample of Kamba benga while the DK and Lulus Band tracks represent the
Kikuyu benga. DK is often credited for having made the Kikuyu benga
mainstream in Kenya but as he explains to me, most of the benga groups
actually had broad appeal: ''There was no tribal music in the 60s and
70s. Kikuyus bought Luo music and Luos bought Kikuyu music. Tribal music
was created under (former Kenyan president Daniel arap) Moi."
In 1970 DK started his own record label DK Undugu Sound (undugu
meaning brotherhood in Swahili), releasing both his own hit records with
The Lulus Band (earlier known as The Lulus Trio Boys and later the DK
Lulus Band) as well as many other musicians. The same year he also
opened his own music shop located on River Road, the musical heart of
Kenya which Emmanuel refers to as the Motown of Nairobi at the time,
hosting endless numbers of music shops and studios.
DK ran the
music shop for decades but finally closed it in 2011 due to increasing
rents and persistent music piracy. Piracy has been hurting DK and many
other Kenyan musicians for decades. "The 70s were really the golden
years of Kenyan music. In the 80s the music piracy increased with
introduction of cheap cassettes to the local market. The tapes were
copied in Uganda and then sold cheaply in Kenya. We tried lowering our
prices but the pirates just decreased theirs even further. We just could
not compete with them," he says.
In the late 70s DK and his companions took their fight against piracy to
Nigeria.
"A lot of Kenyan music was sold in Nigeria but most Kenyan musicians
never received any money from it. So we went there to try and find out
who was importing and distributing it." Their mission failed and after a
few weeks in Nigeria they had to flee the country as the authorities
were threatening to arrest them. But they did manage to see Fela Kuti
perform at his legendary Shrine club in Lagos. DK was later invited to
the US and Europe to perform on several occasions but never managed to
get the necessary visas.
He also got into trouble with the
authorities in Kenya. Although his lyrics tackled many political issues,
it was his love songs rather than his political ones that got him into
dire straits. A few of his hits, including the Nana track featured on
Kenya Special, were banned by the state-controlled radio station for
containing "obscene" lyrics. Another song called Muriki (meaning "coming
together" in Kikuyu) was also banned. "I had to go to Voice of Kenya to
convince them to play it. This was really an era of missionary and
there was much censorship," DK says.
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| DK Mwai and Emmanuel Mwendwa in 2013. Photograph: Andreas Hansen
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The Gatanga servant
After lunch at the Blue Post we drive to
Gatanga, DK's home turf and the cradle of Kikuyu music. Many of the
finest Kikuyu musicians originate from Gatanga and, as Emmanuel tells
me, the small town still has the highest density of musicians anywhere
in Kenya. DK was born in Gatanga and never really left. The proximity to
Nairobi enabled him to keep his home in Gatanga while spending most of
his time in Nairobi.
During the years, DK has served both the
political and musical interests of his home town. From 1979 to 1992 he
was the county representative of Gatanga and he has been the chairman of
Gatanga Music Promoters for years and helped launch the careers of many
young local musicians. But he says more support is needed from the
government: "We need support to create proper recording facilities and
we need the government to start taking actions against the music
pirates."
Both Emmanuel and DK emphasise that although young
Kenyans generally are mostly interested in foreign music, some of them
are starting to rediscover the rich musical heritage of their homeland.
And DK definitely sees a role for himself in a future renaissance of
Kenyan music. His DK Undugu Sound label closed down years ago but he
still runs the DK Wamaria production company and he hopes to soon open a
new music shop in Thika. "I have so much more music to give to this
world," he says.
