Princess Julie: A symbol of official neglect of our artistes

Benga singer Princess Julie [PHOTO/BONIFACE OKENDO/STANDARD]

Does the song Dunia Mbaya ring a bell? Recall Kenya of the late 1990s when a monster-disease called ‘ayaki’ was sorrowfully harvesting human beings on the shores of Lake Victoria. Aids was literally ‘looting’ the bodies of the victims it had conquered in the mid-1980s and storing them in graveyards. Which was what the name ‘ayaki’ was meant to capture: ‘I loot you’.

Dunia Mbaya became a call to national awareness, won the author Sh100,000 and a Mercedes Benz during the 1999 Kisima Awards, and effectively catapulted songbird Princess Julie to national fame. Julie says she later produced 41 other albums. And then she quit music. Do you have any idea where ‘Alili Nyar Jo-Gina’ (Alili Daughter of Gina People) is today? Mr Benson Wanjau Karira (Mzee Ojwang’) of KBC’s Vitimbi fame might be able to tell you: