AFRIMMA Hits a Miss

By Kabura Ng'ang'a 

A couple of weeks ago we all went in words on twitter to complain about the lack of representation, as a country in the Lion King: The Gift album. On the other side of the continent though, Nigerians were enjoying that bouquet on Wizkid’s Ojuelegba video because the album was technically theirs. Now, just a few days ago, the AFRIMMA awards released their list of nominees and again, Kenyans are lowly and wrongly represented on there.

The few noms Kenya has on the list are courtesy of Nyashinski, Khaligraph Jones, NaiBoi, Sauti Sol, Gloria Muliro, Fena Gitu, Victoria Kimani, Papa Dennis and Willy Paul. We have no noms in major categories such as Video of the year, collaborations of the year, song of the year or even Artist of the Year. The wrongly taken artists include NaiBoi for newcomer of the year yet he has been hot here for a hot minute but they have just never taken keen on the industry here to know that. They also included Willy Paul for gospel artist of the year from Kenya yet we all know he been out of that cocoon for a while now.

Maybe as the Kenyan industry there is no much input on the material we are putting out which is debatable because this year has seen great hits. Maybe there is laziness on the part of the AFRIMMA committee and they have been sleeping on Kenya and only placed us on the list as a courtesy call so they used names they have been using since 2000, really. Or maybe all Africa is sleeping on Kenya in the context of music.

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