By Khalifa Hemed
Published March 26, 2019
Though the relationship between musicians and broadcast media presenters in Kenya has always been cordial but frosty over the sounds the latter play on the airwaves, this appears to have hit an all-time low since 2015 when the former protested outside Nation Centre, the headquarters of the largest and most influential mass media conglomerate in eastern Africa. They complained that local radio and television disc jockeys (DJs or Deejays) played foreign, principally Tanzania and Nigerian, music at their expense.
Commenting on the ‘Play Kenyan Music’ protest that captured the attention of both local and international media, Kenyan Afro-fusion musician Eric Wainaina told BBC that ‘if the market is open, as it should be, the best music will come at the top without anyone forcing it to be so’.
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Three years later, in 2018, a local hip hop practitioner called Khaligraph Jones who is also known as Baba Yao Khaligraph Jones or Papa Jones helped in fanning back to life the then subdued flames of #PlayKenyanMusic debate using social media.
But just what do radio and television have to do with music-making in a country whose pluralistic mass media landscape has over the past 22 years made it difficult for consumers to watch and listen to same programmes, discuss same issues, know same broadcasters and name their children after same TV drama characters as used to happen in the days of state-owned monopolistic Kenya Broadcasting Corporation? Now there are more than 20 TV channels and 48 radio stations in the country that make it difficult, if not impossible, to name or idolise radio or TV presenters, listen to same music or watch same soaps as was the case before 1997. Perhaps the only thing that remains true about Kenya is that it it is a two (and sometimes three)-daily newspaper country. The centre of power thus having shifted, one would expect the relationship between radio and TV presenters on one hand and musicians on the other to have changed. But the #PlayKenyanMusic debate that continues to rage shows it hasn’t.
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Is it possible to separate the grain from the chaff for the #PlayKenyanMusic to generate dividends for everyone and not just the feuding musicians and deejays? Could it be true that foreign music dominates airwaves in Kenya? How has this come to be? How can the situation be remedied?
While Felix Odiwour, a comedian, radio presenter and Master of Ceremonies popularly known as Jalang’o contends that the music broadcasters play is determined by consumer preference studies, Maina Kageni, a radio presenter and former musician,says artists must “give us content that will push foreigners off our playlists.”
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Davies Ndolo of The Star newspaper whose two articles–Play Kenyan Music? Don’t think so!, and Quality question haunts the push to play Kenyan music–is one of the writers who have consistently covered the #PlayKenyanMusic debate lately.
“Say what you want, but breaking into the music industry seems easier now more than than ever. However, Kenyan artistes don’t seem to comprehend why their music won’t get significant airplay on mainstream media and their concerts won’t really attract massive crowds,” he writes. “Kenyan artists hardly stand out due to the lack of wide variety of styles and sound unique to each and every artist. They are trying to keep up with the sound of now and constantly come across as perfunctory.”
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Saying that “nearly all stakeholders in the music industry agree that the only way to promote the arts as a nation is to invest in our own”, Ndolo argues that “this puts forward the question of whether our artistes deliver music good enough to be considered for airplay.”
Ndolo quotes Paul Amuko who he describes as a film producer and budding performing artiste as saying that Kenya’s “music scene suffers from mediocrity” and that it “defies all values of perpetual art, from the production of content to its dissemination. The industry cannot be aesthetic or commercialised because it absolutely lacks originality.”
Writing that “Streaming has thrown music genres and sounds into one pot for everyone’s reach and consumption,” Ndolo stresses that “Our artistes have access to this affordable and accessible means of communication, including social media, but for some reason, they have put their hopes on radio hosts and deejays.”
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