Why Kenyan music industry still lags behind

Lack of a structured, centralised body to regulate the production, sale and consumption of music is ruining the industry in the country.

Scholars and other stakeholders argue the existence of several and uncoordinated organisations claiming to represent the interests of artistes have only added to their woes rather than make their lives better.

Rose Ongati, a music lecturer at Maseno University, says the Government needs to streamline structures in the music industry to help make it more profitable and hence attractive.

Prof Ongati argues the existence of bodies such as the Music Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK), the National Environment Management Authority (Nema), the Kenya Association of Music Producers (Kamp), the Performance Rights Society of Kenya (Prisk), and the mass media have made it difficult to identify just which body, if any, really has the interests of the musicians at heart.

The scholar says that barring the media, all the mentioned bodies deduct monies from the sale of music, but none is willing to take the responsibility of safeguarding musicians’ welfare.

She suggests that the Government should enforce the law so that there is clarity and precision in how music authors can benefit from their art.

“The current health of music production in the country is worrying. Music authors have themselves become producers. We have a situation where roles replicate and overlap, and that’s dangerous for national music development,” she says, adding:

“The laws are there. The Copyright Act is clear, very well written. What is direly missing is the enforcement of that Act”. And cultural analyst Joyce Nyairo says Kenyan music shops can resort to digitised sharing of music as a suitable tool for beating piracy.

“If you don’t want to download songs on Mdundo and Kentunes – which is truly the future since smartphones are becoming increasingly affordable, you can always shop for local CDs on Uhuru Highway as you sit in a choc-a-bloc traffic jam,” Dr Nyairo says.

Nyairo is also rooting for specialised recording firms for the different genres of music to raise and maintain standards just as it was in the olden days.

“Assanands carried local and international vinyl records, cassettes and musical instruments. Invariably, albums arrived in Nairobi nearly two years after their release in Europe and America. Elite Camera House near New Stanley also stocked a few vinyl records. There was also Musicraft on Kimathi Street,” she says.

“Melodica was hardly a grand display or design, but was always packed to the rafters and, somehow, those owners always knew what they had,” says Nyairo.

But MCSK Director Tom Kodiyo, says the Government is to blame for the current confusion in the music industry. He argues this partly explains why the quality of the country’s music has generally deteriorated.

“The Government has consistently given little or no attention to music as a source of revenue to the Treasury and as a means of livelihood to the singers”, he observes.

“In 2007, I said at an MCSK meeting that music could give not less than Sh170 million to our economy annually if structures were streamlined. But the Government authorities thought I was exaggerating. When they did their math the following year, they discovered that music had raked in Sh203 million. I still don’t understand why we cannot think seriously about music as a source of cultural revenue even in the face of such clear statistics,” he says.