OPINION: Why Is The Kenyan Music Scene Suffocating Local Talents?

“I don’t mind being the smartest man on the planet, I just wish it wasn’t this planet.” One of my childhood superhero and borderline villain, Ozymandias once said. What did he mean by these words?

Did he loath the fact that his mind functioned at a rate that would make Einstein’s discoveries look like cave drawings, or the fact that he was born on a planet to small for his intellect to blossom? The latter is what he felt made him sink in shallow waters.

This is what I feel Kenyan artists are going through and especially one artist to be specific, Kagwe Mungai. Call me homosexual and I’ll call you a homophobe and a simpleton; the 24 year old singer, rapper, producer and a photo shoot or two away from being a vogue model, is what you’d call the embodiment of a true artist.

He has the looks that make a couple of gods clench their fists in envy, brains that look like Picasso’s masterpieces to neurosurgeons and a voice that would have the orchestra in heaven sounding like dehydrated toads. And yet over and over again his genius is mistaken for ne’er-do- well. The three qualities above, seem to work for all international artists, so why not our own?

Remember Sauti Sol’s “Nishike”? The music piece that had our planet talking like Safaricom had all of a sudden tripped and spilled free airtime rates? Well, Kagwe Mungai was the brains behind the piece and when some “elite” few seated on top of the entertainment pyramid decided it cannot air on local TV, I bet he felt like a kid in class being slapped for giving the correct answer.

Now to what actually made me scream “I’m sick of Kenyan’s la-dee-da nature”, pulled out my quavering, rusty laptop and went for the power button; His new music piece “The Dee” has also been considered “not up to standard”!

So, let’s lay the rather obvious cards on the table. So what if he sings about getting a bit more than French with a girl by jumping straight for a homerun -  sex,  instead of taking her out for dinner and settling for a wet dream later on. So what if Kagwe uses the term “Dee” to refer to the famous Johnson?  

So what if Kagwe is a Kenyan who uses American lingo? So what? Did Timon and Pumba’s invocation of the phrase “Hakuna Matata” make you love ‘The Lion King’ any less? Did It?

There’s a reason all the music you hear on the airwaves isn’t a religious text or a middle-school sing along. And the reason is, mature content is meant for the mature mind and the vice versa. Again, will we call everything that isn’t from the forty something tribes in our colorful country unoriginal?

What I think is happening here, is the sad yet beautiful fact that whenever a Kenyan artist rises, he is automatically up against the international A list artists. Why – because of the simple fact that we Kenyans, with the digital maturity, are exposed to so much foreign content that it’s next to impossible to be impressed by our own.

Chris Brown can sing about “Dee” all day and we wouldn’t find it “not up to standard”, but for a local act, this previously invisible “standards” become the wall of China?“He is such a wannabe” you’ll hear them say.  We admire what Nigerians do with their art form, yet whenever an Eastlando based artist picks up the microphone to mold his background into art, we think it’s too shabby, too ghetto? Brainwash of this multitude is alarming!

Kagwe took the clay around him, via lyrics molded art in his likeliness and opening his mouth, gave the art life: “The Dee” was born. Sadly, the Draconian nature of a few, wants to see this creation fall.

The day when we get to a point of seeing local talent as more than just one of the million inputs on YouTube, more than just another chip off the old block, more than just another bastard with a microphone and see them as ones who decided to stop standing in awe of the staircase and climb it instead, is the day we shall attain world peace (I may be a bit too optimistic, but what the heck?).

Download Kagwe Mungai - The Dee