Mercy Myra

Mercy Myra, who for seven years was dismissed by critics as a singer lacking in creativity as she could not make her owm music despite performing other people's, has launched a 12-song contemporary African album on the Kenyan market. Running the gamut of R&B, ragga, rap, and Congolese dance, the Tabasamu album is in her vernacular Dholuo, and Kiswahili and English.

Myra abandoned computer studies in A Nairobi college to pursue a music career in 1984. She performed mainly Copyright material and was one of the best known singers on the Nairobi scene.

However, it was unclear why she could not record. It was said some producers misused her with empty promises of recording her. She even lost an entire albumm in the computer of one of the producers before hooking up with Suzanne and Diddo Kibukosya of Samawati Productions who have made her realise her dream with the release of Tabasamu which is enjoying massive airplay on the Kenyan media.

The album also features hip hop urbanative artistes Bebe Cool, Gidi Gidi Maji Maji, and K-South Flava. Myra recently collaborated with Le general Defao on two songs which are to be included in the Paris-based Congolese musician's up-coming album. Myra, who has also collaborated with Ubale Mwale (Anna Mwale's younger sisiter), says her role models include Soth Africans Yvonne Chakachaka and Miriam Makeba and beninois Angelique Kidjo. Over the years, Myra has curtain-raised for major musicians who have performed in Kenya.

They include Papa Wemba, Maxi Priest, Lost Boyz, Coolio, Koffi Olomide, and Awilo Longomba. She has also shared the stage with Ras Kimono and Blackie in Nigeria. In 1997, she performed during the first Face of Africa model competition at the senmi finals in Kenya and during the finals in Zimbabwe.

Just last year, she jointly recorded the theme song, Spirit of Africa, with Ugandan artiste Kawesa for the ICC World Knock out Cricket Tournament, held in Nairobi. She also performed live during the event that was televised live to forty countries globally. The previous year, Myra had performed to a crowd of 100000 people during the Benson and Hedges concwert in Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria.

With the release of her album, it is hoped that the career of Kenya's best known and most admired diva will finally take off for the skies. Born in a musical family, Myra enjoyed singing at home and in church. After leaving college in 1994, she joined her aunt, brother and a friend in a band called Colourbash.

Tambours de Brazza) before forming his own group Les Tchielly with his brother Luc (drummer) in 1988. With the Tchielly , Saintrick has opened performances for Baaba Maal, Youssou Ndour and Ismaël Lo. Uprooted from Congo by the civil strife of 1997 that engulfed Brazzaville, the group returned to Dakar through Cameroon and Côte d Ivoire. As what people become is shaped by their background, Saintrick uses his music to advocate peace, respect for human rights, and condemn the conflicts that are destroying Africa.

They never rec orded and she left to join Destinee, another R&B outfit, two years later. She was also involved in Black Ice, another group. It was here that one of the members, a producer, offered to record her but never did. Myra has for a long time been taken as one of the artistes most abused by producers. Rather than be as combative as Poxi Presha, another artiste whose career almost began at the same time like Myra's but who has three albums to his credit, Myra appears to have taken the frustrations silently.

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