John Nzenze: The founder of ‘Africa’s greatest band’

John Nzenze, the veteran Kenyan musician who is being buried on Saturday, was belting out preferred music before the state attained independence extra than 50 several years back.

The singer, guitarist and dancer was amid the past of the pioneer artistes who popularised the Kenyan Twist style of new music, and was element of a band that produced East Africa’s very best funk in the 1960s and early 1970s.

“When you become a movie star, you grow to be a bit arrogant, and in my vanity I designed my individual band, the Air Fiesta Matata Band,” he mentioned in an job interview in Swahili in January.

The band – which provided refugees from Congo, now identified as the Democratic Republic of Congo – identified international fame a couple many years just after it was fashioned.

In 1968, it was rated as the third greatest band in Africa at the All African Music Competition in Algeria, and the pursuing yr it stayed in Ethiopia for quite a few months to carry out for the country’s emperor Haile Selassie.

In 1971, the BBC African Assistance topped it the very best band in Africa and it done in the British isles the next calendar year together with songs greats such as James Brown and the Osibisa group.

But the tour also heralded the stop of the band, as some of its users – each Kenyan and Congolese – resolved to continue to be in the United kingdom.

“When it came to return [to Kenya], the Congolese reported we would rather be refugees right here than in Kenya… The band became paralysed. We break up there in London,” Nzenze mentioned.

But his stature as a musician continued to improve as he played solo, joined other bands, and worked as a producer at Philco Studio in Kenya’s funds, Nairobi.

How Nzenze’s job started out

Born in Nairobi in British-dominated Kenya in 1940, Nzenze was schooled in the town and in western Kenya, where his mom and dad experienced at first occur from.

His training finished when he was in junior secondary faculty, just after which he sought employment in a resort.

Nonetheless, in his teens, he started off playing a guitar that belonged to his father, who was portion of the railway organization band the place he worked.

At the effectively-recognised Norfolk Hotel, in which he had discovered operate as a waiter, Nzenze shared a room in the workers quarters with Daudi Kabaka, with whom he started composing and recording tunes.

But Nzenze was unsatisfied that Kabaka claimed all the credit history, even for all those that he had composed.

He needed to have his songs and identify recognised on radio, just like Kabaka, and hence approached a team of musicians from a unique recording organization which helped him file his initial solitary, Angelike.

Indicating it had intended a large amount to have his tracks performed on radio, he added: “It was not about funds.”

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Angelike, which grew to become one particular of his most popular tunes, was a plea to a girlfriend to return dwelling in spite of the “domestic concerns” involving them.

The love triangle

But just prior to Angelike, he experienced sung with Kabaka a tune about Agneta, a lover, who also happened to be his friend’s lover – nevertheless he did not know it at the time.

The lyrics, translated from Swahili, contain:

I satisfied my 1st girlfriend in Nairobi

She liked me and I loved her again

I requested if she experienced a partner

She instructed me, I don’t even have a lover

I went with her to her area

In Shauri Moyo at the tobacco firm’s residences

As we slept, I heard a ‘knock knock’ sound

Open up, I am the operator of the household

Miss out on Agneta, it really is pretty shameful

To day me and that other male

What if I had fought with that guy

And damage each individual other, what would you have carried out?

Nzenze later on claimed the music was dependent on a real story, though he did not expose the names of those caught up in the adore triangle.

The Common

If a woman loves your track, even the males will enjoy it”

He was a mellowed songster who sang very easily with intimate terms, praising and imploring the females he liked and at periods consoling himself.

“If you never make a lady happy, your songs will not have considerably value. If a female loves your tune, even the adult men will love it,” he after said.

“We have been youthful and we were being clothed in adore,” he extra.

Scornful of today’s new music

Nzenze flourished in reside performances, and criticised the songs manufactured presently with electronic technology, indicating it did not enable musicians perfect their craft.

“Some of the musicians won’t be able to even tell what key their songs is performed the only individual who is aware is the programmer,” he reported.

He added that the only motive his new music survived for so long was simply because of the material.

“I played mature audio, not the music that is manufactured these days and then tomorrow it can be not on the current market,” he instructed BBC Swahili in 2015.

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Other than Angelike, Nzenze’s other memorable hits have been Ninamulilia Susanna (I am crying for Susanna) Veronica, Ni Vizuri kuwa na Bibi (It can be great to have a wife) and Marashi ya Warembo (Women’s fragrance).

But, he advised BBC Swahili, it was Angelike, his signature song, that enabled him to vacation abroad. He performed for months in 2004 in a cruise ship that sailed as a result of quite a few nations, together with Japan and Singapore.

“New music pays, after you get to a particular level, it pays… Angelike took me to many international locations,” he extra.

He also toured the US in 2014, teaming up with fellow Kenyan Peter Akwabi to sing his famous track at the Smithsonian Folklife Competition:

He also recognized the perils of copyright infringement, in particular in a place the place ripped CDs are usually bought on the streets and would be played on clubs and other institutions without artists earning anything at all.

‘A expertise over and above spectacular’

Nzenze co-launched the human body that later on became the Songs Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK), which he served as a board member.

The governing administration recognised his achievements in 2009 when – together with four other pioneering musicians – he obtained the Head of Point out Commendation (HSC) award from then President Mwai Kibaki.

Nzenze retired in 2016, and settled in the smaller city of Kaimosi in western Kenya. He died in clinic on 30 May well from prostate most cancers. He was 80.

Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto paid out tribute to him as a “great soul, a golden musician, resourceful and a talent beyond stunning, a true and original voice”.

“We shall without end cherish his spectacular function and his memory,” he said.