Last Sunday, I received two WhatsApp posts on the hip-hop artiste, Kennedy Ombima, known as King Kaka. One bore the lyrics of his new release, Wajinga Nyinyi (You fools). The second message, posted in a group, was a YouTube link followed by some urgent questions: “When the arts start doing these kinds of things what does history tell us? Is it hype? Is it exasperation? What should we expect from here on?”
SOLIDARITY
Over the next three days, five more people drew me into conversations about King Kaka’s new spoken-word poetry. Is it the birth of a radical that we are all cheering, or is this artiste doing something momentous, in a genre we seldom hear?
Protest music demands social change, it crystallises the ideology of reform movements. If its lyrics engender solidarity and hope that can be transferred to a variety of struggles, and if its melody allows others to add new lyrics, a protest song can become a transformational classic.
Consider the folk song We Shall Overcome, attributed to Pete Seeger. It has been performed in every context – churches, political rallies, signature tune for radio stations, funerals. Translated into Spanish, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, it has led protest marches everywhere — South America, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Israel, India — and has been recorded by many music icons, including Bob Dylan and Mahalia Jackson.
Ketebul Music’s documentary album, Retracing Kenya’s Songs of Protest (2013), highlights our lyrical pursuits of freedom. It features Eric Wainaina, Gidi Gidi Maji Maji, Juliani, Kalamashaka and Necessary Noize, among others. It also explains why songs like Gabriel Omolo’s 1972 hit Lunch Time is a call for social change.
APATHY
But Ketebul exclude some old gems like Gathaithi Church Choir with Maai ni Maruru (the water is bitter), Joseph Kamaru’s JM and D.O. Misiani’s Piny Ose Mer (the world is drunk/upside down). Also missing is the April 2009 track, Million Rhymes, by Abbas Kubaff (Andrew Karuku).
Abbas was famous for Kapuka, a poster-boy for political apathy. In a sudden change of direction, he remixed Lil Wayne’s Grammy Award-winning track, A Milli, and catalogued the atrocities of the Kibaki years — IDPs, the 23 billion maize scandal, poachers, salary increases for MPs and the misfiring guns of Tom Cholmondeley (Delamere). Abbas blew the whistle for action: “Tumechoka vumilia hii maneno watuambia (we are tired of persevering amid all these scandals).” But nothing happened. We forgot him. We forgot the scandals.
Do artistes only become political after they attain fame in the mainstream? Like Abbas Kubaff, King Kaka has changed direction suddenly; changed tune, changed tone. This is no longer the lazy drawl of the content party-hopper out in the club saying, uko tu sawa or mocking middle-class priorities with “ma gyal we are dunda-ing… napiga beer light”.
This is the angry taxpayer. This is the betrayed voter seeking revenge. Gone are the days of songa ka’a-ugali and self-indulgent Kula Vako (take it easy). It’s time for sounds of fury, and weapons of the weak are always more powerful when they are thrown unexpectedly.
RIDICULE
The vitriol in Wajinga Nyinyi is from one who is tired of living in a degrading, low-trust economy. The violence of our environment has become the violence of King Kaka. He throws it back at us, vomiting grenades in a torrent of insults. There is no time to be politically corrected, he calls us voters barbaric, blind and deaf.
The pronoun nyinyi singles us out for ridicule. Sisi would have included King Kaka. Mimi might have raised our sympathy for him. Does his choice of an outward-pointing pronoun compromise his chance to forge solidarity? Can this expletive become our new idiom of freedom?
The timing of Wajinga Nyinyi has added to its popularity. Hot on the heels of the Building Bridges Initiative pitch for the self-preservation of our political elite and following Governor Mike Sonko’s arraignment on charges of corruption, Wajinga Nyinyi arrived in time to say: all our leaders are thieves. Has King Kaka urged us to broaden the net of indictment or has he absolved Sonko?
SCANDALS
King Kaka’s catalogue of corruption scandals and social decay in this regime is carried in bland word-play. The alliteration is commonplace — kura/kula, with minimal rhymes like thao-mbao-Accau.
When he talks of threats to publicly list Helb defaulters, the delivery lacks technical skill, it jars the listener with its lack of rhythm. But we live with randomness, jumping over raw sewage in the CBD, do we have energy for playful lullabies?
Wajinga Nyinyi opens with a penitent Dear Lord and rests on a hymnal background tune — the audacity of juxtaposing invective with prayer! King Kaka knows his audience well. Invoke a word of prayer and every Kenyan sits up to listen. But can religion endorse freedom?
Though famous for his synthesised beats, King Kaka now avoids heavy instrumentals that might mask his stark message. I am reminded of Kendrick Lamar’s Swimming Pools (Drank), which was ironically turned into a party anthem. Lamar’s message defying the culture of binge drinking and alcoholism was lost in the throbbing dance beat and repetition of the words “shots” and “drank”.
DETENTION
There are times when an artiste cannot afford the risk of complex figures of speech. Why cloak the message if no one will get it? Our dumbed-down secondary school curriculum in literature and history has turned us into poor judges of character and ambiguity, dislocated from our past and hopeless at linking cause and effect. Maybe that’s why Wajinga Nyinyi is stripped of allegory, filled with graphic swearwords.
Perhaps our critical thinking happens in places and forms that never mobilise mobs at the voting booth or reach our leadership which is immune to gentle arguments. Perhaps our well-worn practices of deflating power through the malicious laughter of rumour, and the scathing wit in memes, melts our anger and dilutes the fight for radical change. Or — after Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Moi, detention without trial and worse — are we still afraid?
King Kaka had the cunning to invoke our worst fears: Wakinisnipe tonight si mnajua ni kwa nini, Nitakufia watu mi siogopi mimi.
At dawn on Sunday, he posted on Twitter a blog that claimed he “escaped eleven bullets fired into his car.”
MOVEMENT
This was strategic. It gave Wajinga Nyinyi mileage. So did his alleged summons to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations on Tuesday. And so has Governor Anne Waiguru’s emotive demand letter threatening him with a defamation suit.
From Tupac Shakur to Peter Kagia of the Reke Tumanwo fame, threats of repression always turn a creative work into a political moment. The intimidation, including the abuse from social media trolls on hire, has given Wajinga Nyinyi a life and longevity it may not otherwise have had. Those with power tend to forget that popular song is incredibly fleeting unless it is driven by determined and cunning forces. So why aid them?
The trending hashtags #IstandWithKingKaka and #RevolutionNow suggest that King Kaka has captured the chattering class and ignited a mood. But what does revolution look like when there is freedom of speech and teeming media platforms to channel protest? What are we dismantling, now that we know that neither a new constitution nor a horde of young new faces at the top is enough to effect justice and equality?
REVOLUTION
From Pete Seeger’s work in America’s Civil Rights movement to our own Unbwogable victory in 2002, we know that revolutions are not a spontaneous soliloquy. Revolutions are choreographed orchestras driven by clear strategies and dogged forces. At best, Wajinga Nyinyi will be one act in a long, impeccably crafted performance.
It seems appropriate then to close with the foreboding words of Bob Marley written 40 years to celebrate the birth of a new nation: “Soon we’ll find out who is the real revolutionary, And I don’t want my people to be tricked by mercenaries.”
Stay woke in this festive season, may your dreams come true in 2020!