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A touch of Tasha: From a hopeless street girl to meeting her husband, dancer Kanda King

Politics

Tasha, Kanda King's wife

In another life, Lady Tasha would be a marketting wizard. She is energetic, has a sweet tongue and a way with words. She is warm and jovial and has all those attributes that make her so believable, she could sell ice to eskimos.

However, beneath the sweet, light face is a life-hardened character, a product of both her humble upbringing and tough realities she faced as a street child.

Warmly, she extends a hug as we settle down for an interview at the Tribeka Club's VIP section where she is taking a short rest before hitting the stage for the launch of her new nine-track album Mapenzi.

She is not economical with her words, neither does she shy away from telling the hard truth of her past, her life growing up in Huruma slums. Tasha, birth name Grace Gathoni, was raised by a single parent who had polymyotisis, an infection that affects the muscles, while her older brother was also handicapped.

At the age of eight, she went to the dangerous Nairobi streets to try make ends meet. Then one day, sponsors from the Pangani Lutheran Children Centre found her.

"They were looking for girls to take to the centre. They were informed of my woes by one of my teachers; it was hard for them to notice that I was actually a girl. When they told me that they wanted to take me to the centre, I did not want to listen to them until they paid me. At that young age, all I thought of was money to help support my family," she recalls.

Tasha took them to see her bedridden mother and it was only when they agreed to take her mother to hospital that she agreed to go to the centre. It was at this place that she got exposed to music and dance and her passion for the two bloomed. She would perform at shows, theatres and concerts until she cleared her high school education.

"The centre valued music a lot and it built me to be who I am today. It helped me achieve my dream. It taught me discipline, dance and how to be tough. When people ask me where I was raised, I tell them the truth. I feel that it will help other people out there and keeping quiet would close an opportunity to inspire people who are living in the slums," she says.

In one of her shows she met Kanda King, a celebrated dancer, as she wowed the audience with hip-hop moves. Back then, it was unlikely for a girl to break-dance. Kanda and Tasha performed in every show together and the audience demanded that the two never split.

Their fans got more than they bargained for as years later, they exchanged vows and are now blessed with two children who are also following in their parents' footsteps.

She joined Kanda and his singer sister Princess Farida's Rhythms Band as a back-up singer and later became its lead singer. Her album tells of her past and of love. She plans to work on other songs with artistes from East Africa. She takes pleasure in performing shows on live bands.

"With a live band, it is the artiste who is in control of the flow of the performance as opposed to playback. Live bands have their own class. It is soothing to the audience and builds the artiste's vocals. Playback is good for a quick performance, with live bands you are up for anything," she says, before getting ready for her "quick performance".

As the MC of the night, Fundi Frank introduces and the crowd goes into a frenzy. She is not a sweet laid-back soul anymore. Her boldness is reflected in her introduction to her two songs, Mapenzi Zero Percent and Mapenzi ya Leo, and her ballads and acrobatic dance moves that soon got her husband and fans on stage with her.

 

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