African Identities

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‘Africa is still our mama’: Kenyan rappers, youth

identity, and the revitalization of traditional values

David A. Samper

To cite this article: David A. Samper (2004) ‘Africa is still our mama’: Kenyan rappers, youth
identity, and the revitalization of traditional values , African Identities, 2:1, 37-51, DOI:
10.1080/1472584042000231773

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 AFRICAN IDENTITIES VOLUME 2 NUMBER 1 2004 pp. 37—51

‘Africa is still our mama’: Kenyan

rappers, youth identity, and the
revitalization of traditional values

David A. Samper

It is afro hiphop fusion which talks about the social problems we face in life. The
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

youth are being ignored and abandoned by the community and other family
members and they are not concerned with their social lives.
(GidiGidi MajiMaji 2000, liner notes to Ismarwa)
In Kenya, rappers have consciously placed themselves between tradition and
modernity. Many of Kenya’s rappers feel a sense of responsibility toward their
peers – Kenya’s youth – and as the voices of their generation they feel an
obligation to promote the relevance of African heritage in young people’s
definition of self. Rappers take this role seriously; the musicians interviewed
said they try to convey important and locally relevant ‘messages’ to their peers
through their music. Their lyrics confront social issues, frankly discussing sex,
relationships, and AIDS, and serve as a call to revalorize traditional culture.
Kenyans have taken a Western art form and made it their own by using Sheng,1
by using drums and African-inspired beats, and also by using the ‘reality of here’
(Poxi Presha 2000, personal communication). Kenyan rap is a hybrid cultural
form that is deeply implicated in the definition and negotiation of youth
identity.
Rappers in Kenya function as culture brokers or entrepreneurs – individuals
who straddle local boundaries and who are often not only bilingual but bicultural
as well. They are innovative, reflexive about their cultures, and active in
introducing change and mediating between the local group and outside
agencies. They work in the in-between spaces, the liminal, third spaces of
culture. This in-betweenness allows them access to two (or more) linguistic,
cultural, musical, and image systems. Culture brokers have an intimate
knowledge of local institutions, are adept at maneuvering through informal
economies and networks, and are skilful at adapting, appropriating, and

ISSN 1472-5843 print/ISSN 1472-5851 online

# 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1472584042000231773
 38 DAVID SAMPER

translating transnational cultural forms. Culture brokers acquire local cultural

capital from their ability to decontextualize and deterritorialize local forms and
meanings, blend them with global texts, and then re-embed them into local
discourse in ways that are often artful, playful, ironic, mimetic, and reflexive.
As cultural mediators, cultural brokers, such as tourist guides, translators, and
popular musicians, are able to bridge the local and the global.
Giddens suggests that the modern, globalized world presents us with a
dizzying and ‘puzzling diversity of options and possibilities’ with which to
fashion the self (1991, p. 3). In these terms, culture brokers are ‘lay actors and
technical specialists’ whose recombinations of culture help to ‘organise [their]
social world’ (Giddens 1991, p. 3). Cultural brokers are bricoleurs whose
manipulation of existing forms taken from global culture or from local
expressions creates new hybrid cultural forms. Their cultural capital is
dependent on their understanding, access, control, manipulation, and deploy-
ment of both local and global commodities, practices, forms, and knowledge.
From the third space of culture in which they work, culture brokers are able to
construct, invent, and shape hybrid forms and expressions.
African popular musicians are a good example of hybridizing culture brokers.
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

As Chris Waterman explains:

These cosmopolitan individuals are characteristically adept at interpreting
multiple languages, cultural codes, and value systems, skills which enable them
to construct styles that express shifting patterns of urban identity. They are
master syncretizers of modern Africa. … Highly mobile and positioned at
important interstices in heterogeneous urban societies, they forge new styles
and communities of taste, negotiating cultural differences through the musical
manipulation of symbolic associations.
(1990, p. 9)
Waterman brings out several important points about culture brokers. First, they
work in the interstices, those liminal, in-between spaces between social,
economic, and political institutions that Nederveen-Pieterse (1995) argues are
important spaces for the construction of hybrid texts. From Bhabha’s (1994)
third space, they negotiate between various styles, between binary opposites
such as local/global, urban/rural, and traditional/modern. The forms, mean-
ings, and styles they develop can fuse these binary opposites. Second, this in-
betweenness allows them to access two (or more) linguistic, cultural, musical,
and image systems with which they syncretize new forms. These new forms are
internally dialogic in that they carry a double voice, a double consciousness
through images, sounds, and languages that still maintain a connection to their
original referent system, but which, in their new context, mean differently.
Third, through the ‘new styles’ they refashion out of cultural resources, they
define and create new ‘communities of taste’; they demarcate subcultural style.
As culture brokers, Kenyan rappers stand between a cosmopolitan, global
identity and a traditional, local identity. As rappers see it, one of their
responsibilities is to include tradition and ethnicity in the construction of a
modern Kenyan identity. Through the use of vernaculars, several rap musicians,
such as GidiGidi MajiMaji, Poxi Presha, and Darlin’ P, attempt to negotiate a
 ‘AFRICA IS STILL OUR MAMA’ 39

place for ethnicity and ethnic identity within urban youth culture. For example,
GidiGidi MajiMaji, on their latest compact disc, Ismarwa, rapped in Luo. They
made a conscious effort to ‘go back to their roots’ by sitting at the feet of old
people and listening to them for inspiration. Unfortunately, this usually involves
only the use of ethnic languages in their raps, which is problematic in and of
itself because, as one Kenyan music critic, Ogova Ondego, remarked, ‘the
problem is they do not have a command of the languages they are trying to use,
having grown up in Nairobi speaking Kiswahili, English and Sheng’ (Ondego 2000,
p. 1). As an example, he mentions that the Kikuyu in the music of Zannaziki and
Joroge Benson, for example, is not really understood by Kikuyu speakers because
the musicians pronounce the Kikuyu words in English. By extension, these
musicians do not have a command of their own culture either. Although it is
emotionally evocative, the past they are attempting to reinvigorate is an
imagined and, in many respects, a romanticized precolonial past. However,
these young people are invested in capturing what they believe is the best of
their ancestors’ culture and including it in their youth’s identity project
(Giddens 1991).
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

Locally produced rap music’s popularity in Kenya has recently been on the
rise. What started as simple imitation of American rap in local clubs and
competitions has blossomed into a truly Kenyan cultural form. Part of this
success has come from the use of Sheng, Kiswahili, and vernacular languages in
rap songs. The use of local languages, but especially Sheng, has helped Kenyan
rappers find their own voice and finally emerge from the shadows of imported
Congolese music that has dominated the local popular music scene. In 1995, Poxi
Presha released the Luo language single, ‘Total Balaa’ or ‘Total Chaos,’ which
became an overnight success. This song proved that ethnic languages had an
important role in Kenyan rap music and that rapping in mother tongues was a
viable alternative to ‘aping’ American rap.
The compilation compact disc, Kenyan: The First Chapter (Sync Sound
Studios), in 1997 marked a milestone in Kenyan rap as it featured Kenya’s best
rappers to date: Kalamashaka, Jimmi Gathu, In Tu, Maina Kageni, Hart, and the
Ugandan Kawesa. Two other compilation discs followed this successful compact
disc: The Millennium Chapter (Tamasha) in 1999 and Kenyan: The Second
Chapter (Audio Vault Studios) in 2000. These successful releases led to individual
artists producing their own solo compact discs.
Several concerts in the last few years, such as the Benson and Hedges Gold
and Tones and Pamoja in 1999, Power Jam in 2000, and Beats of the Season in
2000 and 2001, have attracted thousands of young people and have showcased
Kenya’s emerging talents. There is now a rap show on Kenyan television that
features local artists, and a Nairobi-based radio station, Nation FM, now plays
more local artists. These rappers emerged from the ranks of ‘the youth’ and,
with and without a microphone in their hands, they have become both culture
brokers and spokespeople for their generation. Through their songs, Kenyan
rappers have addressed difficult issues facing Kenya. With innovative, relevant
lyrics, using English, Kiswahili, Sheng, and a variety of ethnic languages, they
 40 DAVID SAMPER

have produced songs about the HIV/AIDS pandemic, songs imploring Kenyan
youth not to forget their heritage, songs on love, and songs about life in the
slums. However, Kenyan rappers have appropriated neither American rap’s
misogynist rhetoric nor its profanity. According to Poxi Presha, those kinds of
lyrics are not acceptable in Kenya (2000, personal communication).
There are several reasons why young Kenyan musicians are attracted to rap as
an artistic outlet. First of all, rap, as a performance genre, is accessible to
young Kenyans because one does not require instruments or musical technical
expertise. All one needs is a voice and an attitude. Formal music education in
Kenya is limited as most secondary schools do not offer any music classes and
the several teacher-training colleges in Kenya do not train music teachers.
Musical instruments are expensive and not easily available; and private
instruction is also prohibitively expensive for most Kenyans.
However, while musical instruments such as the guitar, drums, brass,
woodwind, and xylophone are rare, choral groups are a common and popular
form of participatory entertainment in Kenya. Many businesses, government
parastatals, religious groups, schools, and colleges sponsor and support choral
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

ensembles. Kenyan television will often present a choral group to fill time
between programming. There is an annual national competition that attracts
hundreds of groups that compete in local, regional, and national arenas. The
finals are held each year at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in
Nairobi and are often attended by high-ranking government dignitaries. Many
young Kenyans are first introduced to singing through these church or school
choirs. They then transfer this training to their rap music performance. For
example, Stephen Kibara, who is a boarding student at St. Mary’s High School in
Nyeri, but lives in Umoja Phase 2, is part of a rap group called Goodfellaz with
his friend Paul Ochieno. Kibara first sang in a school-sponsored church choir and
then, with the confidence and vocal training he learned there, started
performing rap. Currently Form 4 students, Kibara and Ochieno talk about
going to Nairobi after school and becoming professional rap artists. To perform
rap music, as opposed to reggae, Benga, or other popular genres, one does not
need instruments. In fact, Kibara and Ochieno perform for their classmates in
the evenings in their dormitories without instruments or microphones.
Boboshanti, a group of four young men from Kayole in Nairobi, perform on the
streets of their estate to passers-by with only their voices. In fact, these young
men do not have any training at all. Most Kenyan rappers learn their art the
same way Boboshanti and Goodfellaz did – they listened to American and
Jamaican rap and the rap produced by local Kenyans (they mentioned
Kalamashaka, Poxi Presha, and GidiGidi MajiMaji) and emulated the style,
the rhythm, the vocabulary, and the essence of rap. The next step in their
training as rappers involves participating in competitions at bars and discos in
Nairobi. The Florida 2000 disco in Nairobi sponsors these competitions, which
often also include hip-hop dancers. Many young rappers will get their first
opportunity to perform at these types of events.
 ‘AFRICA IS STILL OUR MAMA’ 41

Another important reason that young performers are attracted to rap music is
because of its connection to what Paul Gilroy (1993) has called ‘diasporic
intimacy.’ Young Kenyans, like other youth cultures around the world, face
similar social realities, including poverty, inequality, access to a transnational
culture, and social, economic, and political disintegration (Lipsitz 1994), which
black music such as reggae, ragamuffin, Souskous, and rap addresses.
Transnational rap music expresses issues of racism (‘tribalism’), socio-economic
distress, police harassment and brutality, and government complacency and
corruption. Young Kenyans are familiar with these issues from their daily lives.
For example, Kang’ethe relates to the issue of police suppression: ‘Here in
Kenya we have some things in common with [American rap], how the police
oppress them, the ghetto people [in the United States], and also here in
Dandora, here in Kenya, police brutality is very common, so we relate to that’
(2000, personal communication).
Lipsitz argues that there is a ‘diasporic conversation within hip-hop … [which
is] built on the imagination and ingenuity of slum dwellers from around the
globe suffering from the effects of the international austerity economy’ (Lipsitz
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

1994, p. 27). This conversation deeply and powerfully resonates with young
Kenyans. Kenyan rappers wish to participate in this international dialogue and
add their voice, imagination, and vision. By drawing from and adding to this
conversation, Kenyan rappers can use the ‘existence of the African diaspora’
which ‘functions throughout the world as a crucial force for opening up cultural,
social, and political space for struggles over identity, autonomy, and power’
(Lipsitz 1994, pp. 27–28).
Local rap, informed by a global black popular culture, is yet another way that
young Kenyans are forcing open those moments and spaces of freedom that
allow for the redefinition of the self. Other Kenyan popular music genres (Benga,
Souskous, Swahili pop, Taarab) just do not allow for these youthful moments of
freedom because they are sung in Kiswahili and ethnic languages, which young
people associate with the older generation, because they are performed by
artists who do not self-identify as ‘youth,’ and because the music does not
articulate a global perspective, a modern vision.2
Kenyan young people are also attracted to rap music because it can be both
local and global simultaneously. Lipsitz observed that one of the important
elements in rap’s cultural capital is the energy it derives from its ability to
articulate and respond to local realities of the African diaspora (1994, p. 38).
Kenyan rappers use this energy in rap music to express the ‘reality that happens
here, not things that happen there’ (Poxi Presha 2000, personal communica-
tion). Although rap functions as a vehicle for the expression of local actualities,
at the same time it maintains a global consciousness. Rap music is made local by
rapping in Sheng, Kiswahili, and the local vernaculars, using African instruments
such as drums, horns, and marimbas,3 and using African beats, as well as ‘more
talking on the beat’ (Poxi Presha 2000, personal communication).
Some Kenyan rappers found irrelevant the question of how an African-
American cultural form is made local. As Brian Kang’ethe, a member of the rap
 42 DAVID SAMPER

duo Warogi Wawili, insists: ‘African is still our mama. Rap is an African
thing; not an American thing. Those Americans doing it there are still from
Africa. The blacks there are still Africans’ (Kang’ethe 2001, personal
communication). Rap’s roots are in Africa, and it is therefore African. Kang’ethe
does not think it is necessary to make it Kenyan; it already is by virtue of its
African origins.
In fact, rap music can trace some elements back to Africa; early American
rappers, like Afrika Bamabataa, did turn to Africa for inspiration. African-
American verbal signifyn’, a common element in rap, has been traced back to
Africa and Eshu-Egba, the trickster Ogun (Gates 1988). Kang’ethe and other
Kenyan rappers recognize in rap something authentically African. Therefore,
they consider it theirs. The same process has been used to claim an intimate
connection with African-American celebrities such as Michael Jordan and Will
Smith and with the community of hip-hop artists. However, not lost on
performers and audience alike is the fact that the genre itself knows no geo-
political boundaries. It is part of a larger African diaspora and it is from this
connection that Kenyan rappers acquire a street-based cultural capital. In this
respect, Kenyan rap is a hybrid cultural form because it is internally dialogic, it
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

expresses the realities of the local, and the genre connects it to a global
diasporic intimacy.
Kenyan rappers are multilingual culture brokers who use all the linguistic
resources available to them. By so doing, they confer symbolic power and
cultural capital on all the languages used by young people in their identity
project. Kenyan rap artists generally choose a basic primary language of
performance and use ethnic languages, Kiswahili, and English to achieve specific
ends or when recording. Rappers, like all young people, use the language with
which they, and their audience, are most familiar and comfortable; therefore,
rap artists from Nairobi use Sheng, while those from rural areas use their mother
tongues or Kiswahili, although this is not a steadfast rule. For example, two
young men from Thika, who call themselves Mashida TuPu,4 rap in Kikamba, not
only because it is their mother tongue but also because they wish to be distinct,
to stand out (2001, personal communication). Since they grew up outside of
Nairobi, they do not have the verbal competence necessary to rhyme in Sheng.
Nairobi rappers’ use of Sheng provides an emotional significance to the language
and also adds to young people’s sense of ownership. Popular musicians, Firth
(1983) argues, take common, everyday language, its clichés, banalities, and
trite phrases, and make it affective, meaningful. Like popular musicians, Kenyan
rap artists use the ordinary language of everyday conversation in their songs,
and this has
the power to make ordinary language intense and vital; the words then resonate
– they bring a touch of fantasy into our mundane use of them. Pop songs work
precisely insofar as they are not poems …. The pop song banalities people pick
up on are, in general, not illuminating but encouraging: they give emotional
currency to the common phrases that most people have for expressing their daily
cares.
(Firth 1983, p. 38)
 ‘AFRICA IS STILL OUR MAMA’ 43

Rap music adds vitality, symbolic power, and emotional resonance to the
languages that the youth use to express themselves. Rappers give Sheng
emotional significance, intensity, and ‘make plain talk dance’ (Firth 1983,
p. 37). However, it is not just Sheng that derives this benefit. Kenyan rappers
also use their ethnic languages, English, and Kiswahili. It is important to realize
that rappers do not use the standards of these languages. Their Kiswahili is
interspersed with English, and their English is heavy with borrowings from Black
American and Jamaican slang that they hear in imported rap and reggae songs.
These borrowings and transformations connect the languages to the symbolic
power of the African diaspora. Through their use in performance, ethnic
languages, Black English, and Kiswahili are also made modern, hip, vital, and
emotionally significant to Kenya’s identity project.5 Through rappers’ use, these
various local languages are removed from their usual Kenyan cultural milieu – be
it tribe, school, or parents – and become viable as elements of subcultural style.
Rappers self-identify as members of ‘the youth’ and as part of youth culture
in Kenya. Part of their work as culture brokers is to express the attitudes,
values, imagination, hopes, and dreams of Kenyan youth that otherwise go
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

unsaid. Poxi Presha, K-South Flava, Darlin’ P, Warogi Wawili, all recorded
artists, see themselves as the voice of their generation (2000–2001, personal
communication). One of the issues that they give voice to is the role of
traditional culture in the lives and identities of young people. Rappers argue
that an authentic Kenyan identity must also include elements from traditional
culture. When rappers use Kiswahili and ethnic languages, they are trying to
make this point. They are articulating a sentiment many young people have
expressed time and again in interviews and in casual conversation: they do not
want to abandon their traditions, their ethnicity, and their past. Although young
Kenyans may be increasingly detribalized, their ethnic consciousness is still very
important to them. As Poxi Presha said, ‘People do not want to lose their
tradition, they still want it but in a modern way. They don’t want to lose the
old, but they still want new things’ (Poxi Presha 2000, personal communication).
Rap does this, it embodies tradition and modernity because it is part of the
global world and at the same time expresses and reflects traditional elements
and philosophy.
This project of revalorizing tradition and African heritage takes place in two
ways. One way is the inclusion in their raps of ethnic languages and Kiswahili, as
well as traditional music styles, instruments, sounds, and images. A second way
is to warn about the danger of ‘aping the West.’ Although using ethnic languages
in this revalorization of the past is important to them, it is also one method
some rappers, like Darlin’ P, use to add an African flavor to rap. His most
popular song to date is ‘4 in 1’ in which he raps in Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Kikamba,
and Kiswahili. The song was part of the compilation compact disc Kenyan: The
Second Chapter. Although the song is comedic – he mimics a Kalenjin policeman,
a Kamba truck driver, and a Kikuyu farm boy – Darlin’ P insists that there is an
important message in his music. As he says, ‘I want to unify all Kenyans, all
walks of life, all tribes, to be proud of our languages and not to rely on
 44 DAVID SAMPER

Westerners’ (quoted in Salmon 1999, p. 27). By extension, to be proud of their

languages also means to be proud of their cultures – to be proud of being
Kalenjin, Kamba, and Kikuyu (Darlin’ P 2001, personal communication). He
argues that being in touch with Kenya’s different languages is an important part
of being Kenyan: ‘You live with other tribes, you hear people talking. It’s
something you hear every day’ (quoted in Salmon 1999, p. 27). He says he mixed
the languages in one song because Kenyan identities are also mixed (Darlin’ P
2001, personal communication).
There is another element to the inclusion of ethnic languages in rap. As
Kang’ethe of Warogi Wawili put it, rappers look to the past for morality and
values (2000, personal communication). These are values and morality that they
see as lacking in the government and in their parents’ generation; a lack of
values and morality that they see all around them in the ghettoes in which they
live. As Kang’ethe says, ‘Morality mattered in our African [past]. But since
colonial rule came, morality was like nothing. It was all about the money and
politics’ (2000, personal communication). Kang’ethe, Darlin’ P, Kalamashaka,
and several other rappers, who have yet to be recorded, have formed a self-help
and self-promotion association they call Mau Mau, after the revolutionary group
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

that fought for Kenyan independence.6 According to Kang’ethe, they decided to

call themselves Mau Mau because they feel that a colonial system is still in
place, and, just like the Mau Mau fought colonialism, they are fighting this new
colonialism with raps. The Mau Mau believe:
what we are going through is because of the colonial system. What we are going
through in the ghettoes, in our government, is because of the colonial system
that is going on right now. So, we try to pass on a message of what we believe,
what culture we should take on. Right now, that name can symbolize that we
can come out of the ghettoes, show the world that if you are determined you
can make it.
(Kang’ethe 2000, personal communication)
For the Mau Mau, the name also symbolizes the maghetto’s struggle to make it
in the face of harsh poverty and despair. So they wish to bring back that which is
good in their traditional culture, they want young people, their audience, to
understand their culture, to be ‘proud of their blood’ and thus stop the ‘mental
slavery,’ which is a result of this new colonialism (Kang’ethe 2000, personal
communication). Similarly, GidiGidi MajiMaji, in a rap song called ‘Mayie,’ see
Western commodities as enslaving the minds of young Kenyans. The liner notes
explain that the title means ‘a slave cry, in the present situation we are slaves
who have been engulfed in cultural bondage we do not understand. There’s a
silent war within us [signified by machine gun fire] in search of our origin and
heritage’ (2000, liner notes). Like the members of Mau Mau, GidiGidi MajiMaji
believe that foreign commodities and culture are creating a ‘cultural bondage’
to the West and that it is only by reclaiming their African heritage that these
mental shackles can be broken.
Slavery of the mind also comes from a new form of Western colonialism, what
Kang’ethe calls ‘aping the West’ (2000, personal communication). Tied to the
discourse on tradition is the issue of unreflective assimilation of Western
 ‘AFRICA IS STILL OUR MAMA’ 45

culture. The problem, as these rappers see it, is that Western culture is
obscuring at best and destroying at worst traditional African culture and values.
The rap group GidiGidi MajiMaji moved to the forefront of this debate with the
release of their compact disc Ismarwa, a collection of hip-hop music in Luo.
Ismarwa means ‘ours’ in Luo. However, to make certain that their message is
understood by all Kenyans, not just the Luo, the liner notes provide English
translations to some of their lyrics along with English commentary on several of
their songs. The overall message they present is that Kenyan youth should not
forget their dala, or traditional home. Dala for them is not just home but also
means motherland (2000, liner notes). The photograph on the cover shows them
glistening with oil wearing only Kikoi and sitting on ‘Lamu’ furniture with an
African carved wooden figure in the background. Photographs in the liner notes
show them in different poses with a West African talking drum. The first track is
a whispered poem with the sound of a crackling fire in the background. The
mental image it inspires is that of village members in the bush by a fire under a
vast African night. On track 9, ‘Giddi’s Dream,’ they warn Kenyan youth that
they are losing their ethnic identity to foreign influences. The commentary on
this song reads:
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

Was it funny? Then probably you smiled or laughed loudly. We are the character
proposing marriage to the white woman. The woman symbolizes the foreign
culture that we are quickly adopting. We are getting lost into the foreign culture
while ignoring our very own. The character who knocks [at] the door symbolizes
our consciousness or reality. Let’s wake up and ask ourselves ‘What Ismarwa and
what is not marwa’ (what is ours and what is not ours).
(2000, liner notes)
Darlin’ P also warns about the dangers of ‘aping the West.’ In an unrecorded
rap, ‘Styles and Fashion,’ he asks young women in miniskirts and lipstick, ‘Who
from the West do you see copying you?’ He laughs and then says maybe they will
be wearing panties on their heads next (2000, personal communication).
GidiGidi MajiMaji and Darlin’ P are making a distinction between two types of
Western commodities and culture. First, there are cultural commodities that,
like rap itself, are seen as part of the African diaspora even though they are
technically ‘Western’ products. These items, because they can claim an African
ancestry, are not part of the new Western commodity colonialism. So Darlin’ P
does not criticize his own style, which is imitative of American rappers, but he
does criticize fashion that cannot proclaim its Africanness. Second, there are
products and customs from the West that are not part of the African diaspora,
and those, like the white woman in ‘Giddi’s Dream,’ pose a danger to authentic
Kenyan identity.
A similar discourse over Western commodities has been part of a new religious
movement’s cultural agenda. Mungiki is an Islamic religious movement that has
recently developed in Nairobi. They too are asking questions such as ‘Who are
we?’ and ‘What is our identity?’ Its members reject their Western names and
Westernization in general. In November of 2000, some members of Mungiki in
Kayole stripped and beat women who were wearing ‘Western’ fashions such as
blue jeans and trousers.7 Like Mungiki, some rappers decry the corrupting effect
 46 DAVID SAMPER

of ‘white’ commodities and cultural forms while arguing for a return to

tradition. Unfortunately, this dialogue seems to focus on women, their fashions,
and their moving away from traditional gendered spaces and roles.
In a similar vein, GidiGidi MajiMaji on track 7 of Ismarwa, ‘Fikira,’ ‘a Swahili
word for ‘‘thoughts,’’’ rap the following in Luo:
Africa, we are in a deep sleep
We are dreaming
Until when shall we sleep?
Wake up Africa
Wake up, it’s dawn
Are you not shaken?
Are you not moved?
Ask yourself these questions
Where am I from and where am I heading to?
(GidiGidi MajiMaji 2000, liner notes)
This rap, together with the song ‘Dala,’ makes a profound statement. According
to the liner notes, ‘[Dala] describes a person who has decided to go back home
because he has been misled. In this case home is our motherland. It is a song for
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

the love of the motherland’ (GidiGidi MajiMaji 2000, liner notes). In their role as
culture brokers, GidiGidi MajiMaji prescribe a return to the motherland. They
urge a physical return not just a metaphorical or symbolic return. Just like they
did in preparation for this compact disc, GidiGidi MajiMaji want young people to
listen to the songs their grandmothers sing as they prepare supper. In an
interview about their new compact disc, they described how they had returned
to their own motherland and sat at the feet of the elders and listened to their
wisdom and insight (Karuoya 2000). In essence, they are urging Kenyan youth not
to allow the West to mislead them; it is from their mothers and grandmothers
and from the wisdom of their elders that the foundation for an authentic Kenyan
identity is to be found. Where they came from, their dala, is the starting point
of their journey into the future.
A similar sentiment is expressed in Kenyan: The Second Chapter, released in
2000. In the last track, ‘Umbia’ (Flare up), a speech by Jomo Kenyatta is accom-
panied by music. In this song, Kenya’s first president is rousing Kenya’s youth to:
Flare up as the flames of a fire. Consume the nation with your passion. Let the
word Kenyan denote dynamism, industry, ingenuity, principle and discipline. Let
the Kenyan culture sing loud and clear, echoing over the hills and ridges.
(2000, liner notes)
Tedd Josiah, Kenya’s premier music producer, continues with this call for a
passionate engagement with Kenya’s past when he writes in the liner notes of
Kenyan: The Second Chapter, which he produced, that young Kenyans should
‘complete the portrait [of Jomo Kenyatta’s speech] by being true to your
heritage … being Kenyan. There is no limit to love, to joy and to dreams’ (2000,
liner notes).
This call to return to an African heritage, to a traditional past, does not mean
a return to ‘living in a mud and wattle hut or walking barefoot’ (Mboya 1965).
Drawing on Bob Marley for inspiration, Kang’ethe says: ‘Like Bob Marley said, it
 ‘AFRICA IS STILL OUR MAMA’ 47

is not the technology that is bad; it is the people that are bad. You can have
technology, but still have people who understand their culture and are proud of
being black’ (2000, personal communication). Kenyan rappers are continuing a
dialogue begun by such figures as Tom Mboya, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Owuor
Anyumba, Taban lo Liyong, and Okot p’Bitek. These political and literary men
called for a ‘psychological’ return to a traditional culture, not for an
abandonment of modernity, but for an amalgamation, a hybrid construction
of cultures. Tom Mboya, for example, called for a fusion of African culture and
tradition with ‘all that we can usefully learn and borrow from the rest of the
world’ (1965, p. 28).
Similarly, in more recent times, O.J.E. Shiroya (1992) wrote that the
reclaiming of tradition and its integration into modern life is the only way the
African mind will be free of colonialism’s legacy. Rappers have taken it upon
themselves to continue and expand this debate. However, the question that is
left unasked is how these traditional values are to be lived. How is tradition to
be practiced? While the practice of tradition may be on the wane, ethnicity is
still an important factor in daily life. In Ali and Alamin Mazrui’s (1995) words,
even though Kenyan youth may be becoming more ‘detribalized,’ they are
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

becoming more ethnically conscious. By detribalization, Mazrui and Mazrui do

not mean that Kenyans stop thinking of themselves as Luo, Kikuyu, or Maasai –
they mean a decline in behavior or practice of customs, rites, and rules. They
argue that ‘it is, therefore, possible to have declining ‘‘ethnic behaviour’’ as
one becomes increasingly cosmopolitan, but stable or even increasing ethnic
loyalty in terms of emotional attachment’ (Mazrui & Mazrui 1995, p. 2). So while
rappers may argue for a cosmopolitan, modern, and urban identity, that identity
must be tempered by a strong ethnic consciousness.
Boboshanti introduce another element into this dialogue. In an unrecorded
rap, ‘Balaa’ (Kiswahili for ‘calamity’), they point out that not all of Kenya’s, and
by extension Africa’s, problems are the result of Western influence, some are
home-grown. It is time, they argue, that Africans find their own solutions to
their own problems. The AIDS crisis, corruption, tribalism, and urban poverty
(which is linked to crime), are all problems that they identify in this particular
rap, and the answers to these problems can be found in African tradition. For
example, in the following excerpt from their stanza on AIDS, they call upon the
wisdom of the elders through the use of a proverb.
Sio matusi wala chuki
Kwanza tuanze rangi (jo)
Wewe sio mueusi
Lakini ume jaa virusi vya ukimwi
Mbona uji fanye chizi
Unajua mingi
Sai umepatikana, ukweli jo hakuna siri
Asiyeskia la mkuu huvunjika guu.

It is not abuse or hatred

First we start color
You are not black
 48 DAVID SAMPER

But you are full of AIDS virus

Why you pretend you are mad
You know much
This time you have been taught truth, there is no secret
He who does not heed the elders’ advice breaks his leg.
The proverb ‘Asiyeskia la mkuu huvunjika guu’ carries the weight of tradition.
Although this panacea is short on specifics, Boboshanti insist
that workable solutions to these pressing social issues can be found
when traditional African values, morals, and philosophy become part of the
equation.
Another element of Kenyan rappers’ work as culture brokers is the
construction of an urban sense of place. They are helping to redefine the
ideology of home. However, this discourse does not romanticize the ghettoes or
estates these young rappers call home. In fact, it does quite the opposite. These
rappers argue that Nairobi’s lower-class estates, the ‘slums’ and ‘ghettoes,’
must first be revitalized. By focusing attention on the ills, dangers, and violence
of these estates, they are calling on young people to initiate change that will
one day culminate in Kenyans being able to proudly call these places home. One
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

of the most popular rap songs in Kenya is Tafsiri Hii by Kalamashaka. A remix of
the song was recorded for the compact disc, ‘The Millennium Chapter’
(Tamasha), released in 2000. ‘Tafsiri Hii,’ which means ‘translate this,’
describes life in Nairobi’s slums. The rap begins with a catalogue of Nairobi
estates, including Dandora, Huruma, Westlands, Bahati, Muthaiga, Langata,
Uhuru, Runda, and then satirizes a popular Kiswahili tourist song when they sing
Kenya kuna matata (in Kenya there are problems):8
Ah, nitangaza kuwa Africa
Kuna matata basi mashaka
Wadogo kwa wakubwa huku nasi
Kwa pata kakika hakuna kichwa
Wala mkia kina obohoo

Ah, if I announce/declare that in Africa

There are problems then why do you doubt
Young and old, and here we are
To find that in truth we have no head [i.e. we are lost]
And even we have no tail.9
The rap goes on to suggest that the problems facing Kenyans are insurmoun-
table. One possible ‘escape attempt’ is alcohol: Akilini sana nita zururuaka/
nipatie angaluo chupa kathaa Tusker (If I think of that I will go crazy/ So hand
me just a few bottles of Tusker). There is so little hope left in these estates that
suicide becomes an option:
Ah, Mungu wangu zitaisha lini?
Kila siku mimi ninawaza ninakaa
Nilipeleke futii sita chanini balaa

Ah, my God when will my troubles come to an end?

Every day and I meditate and I stay
If I should commit suicide.
 ‘AFRICA IS STILL OUR MAMA’ 49

Darlin’ P uses a similar motif when he describes his estate, Kayole, in an

unrecorded rap in Sheng:
Tembea Kayole mwili zuba na ngomongo10
Wanabliki medusa buzaa na mung’are11
Watu huku wanalewa hata tangu asubuhi
Wanapiga nduru kama nyang’ao
Unashidwa Oh ma God hii dunia gani
This is the present Sodom na Gomorrah
Sijui nitaita Ndingi Mwana wa Anzeki
Aweze kuombea hawa ili wareform.12

Walk through Kayole, Zuba and Ngomongo

[The people there] drink illegal brew
People there are drunk even from morning
They yell and scream like demons
You have failed oh my God this world which
This is the present Sodom and Gomorrah
I don’t know. I’ll call upon [Catholic] Bishop Ndingi Mwana wa Anzeki
So that he prays for [these people] to reform.
Kayole, in Darlin’ P’s imagination, is a place of drunkenness and violence
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

far removed from traditional village life. There is a sense that it is now
beyond mortal hands to improve and that it is now up to God alone to
reform Kayole and its residents. Although there have been no population studies
in Kayole, there have been for Pumwani and Dandora, which are similar to
Kayole in social and economic terms. In Pumwani, around 78 per cent of
residents are tenants and another 15 per cent are sub-tenants (Syagga & Kiamba
1992). The numbers are probably very similar in Kayole. This means that, unlike
in village life, there is no emotional attachment to the land or the area. For
many Kenyans of the previous generation, home is the rural areas, their
traditional ancestral lands. Nairobi is not their home; it is just where their house
is located.
Darlin’ P’s desire for improvement and for change is due in part to a changing
ideology of home among young people. A Kikuyu father was flabbergasted when
his son had no interest in the farm he owned in Kandara, near Thika town (Wa-
Gachanja 2001, personal communication). Young people are more and more
thinking of their houses in Nairobi as home and they are trying to build an
emotional connection. This is probably one of the reasons why young people
differentiate Sheng according to locality. Speaking a version of Sheng unique to
Kayole is one way of building this emotional connection. Some rappers have used
variations of their estate’s name in the name of their group. For example,
K-South is Kariobangi South estate. Boboshanti, too, is derived from the
colloquial use of shantytown for Kayole. Kenyan rappers are reading a particular
type of association between the rapper and his city or community in American
rap and participating in creating a similar emotional connection between young
people and the city of Nairobi. In a sense, by singing about Nairobi’s estates and
slums, rappers are asking young people to imagine a better place and then to
make it happen.
 50 DAVID SAMPER

Rappers are trying to reclaim for their identity project that which makes
them unique – traditional values and heritage. They are trying to bridge the gap
between modern, urban youth and their past from which urbanization and
modernization have alienated them. Here they employ the rhetoric of
colonialism and see themselves and their project as resistance – just as
the Mau Mau resisted British colonialism, they are resisting the cultural
colonization of their individual and group identity. One of the ways in which
they ‘fight back’ is by using and revalorizing vernaculars in their raps. We must
bear in mind, though, that when these ethnic languages are used in a different
context, such as a rap, they acquire new meaning while also retaining traces
of the old.

Notes

1. Sheng is youth argotic register that combines English, Kiswahili, and ethnic
languages. It is a street-based peer group slang that has become the de facto lingua
franca of Kenya’s urban youth.
African Identities 2004.2:37-51.

2. Benga music uses ethnic languages, and therefore is ethnically specific. In fact,
many young people did not know what Benga was and did not recognize some of
its most famous practitioners. Souskous comes from Zaire and is often performed
in Lingala. While young people are aware of it (they call it simply Lingala), they
like it only as dance music. As several Kenyans told me, since they do not
understand the lyrics, they really do not care for it. Finally, taarab is a popular
music form on the coast of Kenya and Tanzania but has not made inroads into the
interior.
3. Session musicians, which are only available to Kenyan rappers during recording,
provide these African instruments and beats.
4. Josephate Kaleli and John Mutoo are Mashida TuPu.
5. Darlin’ P made an interesting comment about rappers and language. When
recording music, rappers tend to be linguistically conservative, meaning they will use
a very basic Sheng or Kiswahili ‘sanifu’, but when they perform live, they use a lot
more Sheng. For example, in the compilation compact disc Kenyan: The Second
Wave, most songs are in a very basic Sheng, English, or Kiswahili except on the one
track where Warogi Wawili are freestyling. I found a similar linguistic conservatism
when hopeful rappers gave me texts of their raps; they were in Kiswahili or English.
But, when they rapped for their friends in dormitories or on street corners, they used
Sheng. Poxi Presha also said that he raps in Kiswahili and English in order to expand
his fan base beyond Kenya (2000, personal communication).
6. A song by Warogi Wawili, ‘Mpaka Saa Ngapi,’ presents parts of the group’s agenda.
7. Some Nairobi residents question whether the perpetrators of this stripping of
women were actually Mungiki members or government agents wishing to discredit
the movement.
8. The popular Kiswahili song, Jambo Bwana, originally written by Teddy Kalanda
Harrison and recently remixed by Them Mushrooms (2000), is very popular among
tourists as it teaches greetings in Kiswahili:
Jambo, Jambo Bwana,
Habari gani? Mzuri Sana.
Mageni wakaribishwa,
Kenya yetu,
Hakuna Matata.
 ‘AFRICA IS STILL OUR MAMA’ 51

Hello, hello sir?

What is the news? Very good.
Kenya ours,
There are no problems.

9. These last two lines are a reference to the Swahili proverb, Hana kichwa wala
mkia, or ‘Without head or tail,’ which means that someone is totally lost.
10. Zuba and Ngonomongo are place names within Kayole estate.
11. Meduza, buzaa and mung’ari are names for illegal ‘home’ brews. Meduza is a
Sheng word.
12. This is an unrecorded untitled rap that Darlin’ P shared with me during our
interview on 6 January 2001.

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