Mimicking some Kenyan artists do won't make them better musicians

I do not pretend to have interacted with all young but fairly serious Kenyan singers. Yet the more I meet them, the more solidly I become convinced that lack of common sense at the theoretical level subjects Kenya to a terrifying cultural haemorrhage.

Ordinarily, that gap should have been filled by genuine advice from elderly Kenyan singers. However, ours is a tragic case where, if a young artiste saw an elderly hand coming anywhere near them, the youth might scamper away faster than the hare.

But if they continue treating, like Ebola plague, the very people who should offer them tips based on lived, artistic experience, then from which babies-in-the-womb will our musicians accept such advice?

The truth is, Kenyan music has the potential to compete neck and neck against Tanzanian, Congolese, South African, Malian, Senegalese, Nigerian, Jamaican, and even African-American music.

The drawback, I think, is that a good deal of young Kenyan singers suffer from the curse of 'not knowing', even at the level of theory. The regrettable part is that even extremely gifted voices break their legs in this ditch of ignorance.

It is the only way I can explain a very interesting answer, which came my way in an interview with a young Kenyan who is endowed with – I emphasise– a very, very gifted voice.

A particular song of his, in my view, is one of the best to have come from Kenya. And so it bothered me that when I watched him perform on TV, one song was nothing but South African music.

I asked him, "You have a golden voice. But why do you copy South African music on TV?" To which he answered very innocently: "My intention is to shock them. I plan to shock the South Africans. I want them to know that I can play their music the same way they do it." Of course, I laughed.

But the discovery was humbling. I corrected him immediately and observed: "I think it is better to shock them by playing Kenyan music to the level they play their South African music. How do I hope to shock Tilapia fish in Lake Victoria by giving it a swimming costume? The costume will not shock the fish; my foolishness will."

Let me return. I suspect that some Kenyan singers internalised the psychology of defeat a very long time ago. And so, instead of striving to compete against other people using Kenyan music, they choose to do so by playing those people's music. What a waste of time – how futile!  

Take reggae music for instance. A TV channel I used to thoroughly enjoy months ago, has now been ruined for me because it looks mainly for Kenyan bands that play reggae music (How else do I explain the regularity with which dreadlocked singers invade their TV screen each morning?) I do not know the real reason, but I suspect it is because President Uhuru Kenyatta confessed months ago, that his best band is UB40. And perhaps because of this, countless Kenyan 'singers' crawl out of their holes brandishing reggae placards.

The planes that ferry Alaine and Konshens from Jamaica to Kenya, "almost collide in the air" (to borrow the late Samuel Kivuitu's words).

What these people will never change is this: That however well you play Jamaican music, there is no day it will become Kenyan music. It is just Jamaican music in Kenya.

I say the same for Nigerian, British, African-American, Tanzanian, South African, and even Congolese music. In fact, all these countries have never bothered about your music.

The only exception is DR Congo (through Lokasa ya Mbongo), which grabbed and refashioned DO Misiani's 'Kisero Pek Chalo Kidi'.

No, it is not bad to appreciate other people's music. It is very enriching. Indeed, there is no single day I did not listen to a U2 rock band's CD in the house.

But the day I will grab a guitar and begin playing my own version of Bono's song called 'Elevation', that day I will have become the biggest cultural ape the world has ever known.

Unfortunately, our planet sees that giant primate in Kenyan music each day, but just by changing their thinking, younger Kenyan singers can slay the ape once and for all.