Kenya play that country sound . . .

Sir Elvis
Country Music
Kenya
Will Swanson

As I said only two days ago, "I learn something new every day." Well, to be frank, I'm not sure I learned anything new yesterday, but I did learn something new the day after yesterday . . . which I believe we call "today," though if I rightly recall, it was called "tomorrow" back then. Time. Who can understand it?

But enough metaphysics. What did I learn today? I learned there is something called "Kenyan country music." Meaning American country music played by Kenyans. In Kenya! According to Isma'il Kushkush, "Country Music Finds a Home Far From Home, in Kenya" (NYT, July 1, 2015), and here it is:

Sir Elvis, dressed in a yellow and black plaid shirt, jeans, boots and a black cowboy hat, tuned his guitar under the wooden roof and neon beer advertisements of the Reminisce Bar and Restaurant. With a signal to the band, he began singing . . . in a purring baritone . . . . This would not be an unusual sight for Nashville or just about any country tavern in the United States. Except this was not East Texas, but Nairobi in East Africa, where American country music has a surprisingly robust, and growing, following.

How did this happen?

"I grew up with it, and my parents loved country," said Elvis Otieno, 37, who has become perhaps the best-known Kenyan country performer. Sir Elvis, as he is known onstage, was born the year Elvis Presley died, and was named after him by parents who were big fans of the King.

That reminds me of something Charley Pride said about growing up listening to country music and never thinking that it might be just white folks' music. Like Pride, Kenyans listen to all kinds of American music:

But it is country music that has a strong hold. Country songs are regularly played on the radio. The Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation has a weekly radio show, "Sundowner," that often features country, while a private television station, 3 Stones, broadcasts a program called "Strings of Country." Reminisce and the Galileo Lounge here have weekly gigs, and the first country music fair in Kenya, the Boots and Hats Country Festival, took place in March [and] . . . . Kenyan country singers are writing their own music about love and longing, in an American twang.

I was used to Charley Pride singing great country music, but I still was surprised to learn that the country genre had Japanese fans. I discovered that fact in Berkeley, in the latter 1980s, when several Japanese girls appeared as dinner guests in the house where I lived on Alcatraz Avenue. During the after-dinner conversation, I happened to mention Hank Williams, and one of the girls became excited and cried out that she loved country music. How did this happen?

American country music has found audiences around the world, introduced by American soldiers to Japan, Korea, Thailand and Germany, and through Hollywood movies. Particularly devoted fan bases have grown in unexpected places like Australia, Jamaica and South Africa . . . . In Kenya, country music's popularity dates to the 1940s and crosses classes, but is especially pronounced in the central highlands, the country's farm belt. Many of the fans are over 50, but a younger generation who grew up listening to their parents' music also tune in.

But how did country music reach Kenya?

European settlers, mostly British, transported the music here during Kenya's colonial era, which ended in 1963. "We took it up from them," John Obongo, the host of "Sundowner," said of the Europeans . . . . Kenyans, Mr. Kimotho said, "can identify with the stories in the songs." A type of music called Mugithi, a genre developed in central Kenya and traditionally sung with guitar accompaniment in the Kikuyu language, has a country feel, giving its listeners an affinity for modern American country music.

I can imagine the affinity the Kenyans feel because of Mugithi, but did the British really carry country music to Kenya?

Barack Obama: In to Africa...

Kenya

(Image from Wikipedia)

To understand Barack Obama today, you have to know what he came to understand through his trip to Kenya. His earlier views on Third World, or even African solidarity took a few knocks.

Wanting to see more of Kenya, he decides to take a safari trip to the Great Rift Valley, so he and his half-sister Auma go to a travel agency in Nairobi. The agency is run by 'Asians' -- the British term for "South Indians" -- as are most small businesses in Nairobi, according to Barack.

These 'Asians' are not especially popular, as Obama comes to find out -- along with some other disappointing revelations. As he and Auma ride a van to the safari spot, he recalls that as they were purchasing their tickets at the travel agency, Auma had tensed up:

"You see how arrogant they are?" she had whispered as we watched a young Indian woman order her black clerks to and fro. "They call themselves Kenyans, but they want nothing to do with us. As soon as they make their money, they send it off to London or Bombay."

Her attitude touched a nerve. "How can you blame Asians for sending their money out of the country," I had asked her, "after what happened in Uganda?" I had gone on to tell her about the close Indian and Pakistani friends I had back in the States, friends who had supported black causes, friends who had lent me money when I was tight and had taken me into their homes when I'd had no place to stay. Auma had been unmoved.

"Ah, Barack," she had said. "Sometimes you're so naive."

I looked at Auma now, her face turned toward the window. What had I expected my little lecture to accomplish? My simple formulas for Third World solidarity had little application in Kenya. Here, persons of Indian extraction were like the Chinese in Indonesia, the Koreans in the South Side of Chicago, outsiders who knew how to trade and kept to themselves, working the margins of a racial caste system, more visible and so more vulnerable to resentment. It was nobody's fault necessarily. It was just a matter of history, an unfortunate fact of life.

Anyway, the divisions in Kenya didn't stop there: there were always finer lines to draw. Between the country's forty black tribes, for example. They, too, were a fact of life. You didn't notice the tribalism so much among Auma's friends, younger university-educated Kenyans who'd been schooled in the idea of nation and race; tribe was an issue with them only when they were considering a mate, or when they got older and saw it help or hinder careers. But they were the exceptions. Most Kenyans still worked with older maps of identity, more ancient loyalties. Even [Aunt] Jane or [Aunt] Zeituni could say things that surprised me. "The Luo are intelligent but lazy," they would say. Or "The Kikuyu are money-grubbing but industrious." Or "The Kalenjins -- well, you can see what's happened to the country since they took over."

Hearing my aunts traffic in such stereotypes, I would try to explain to them the error of their ways. "It's thinking like that that holds us back," I would say. "We're all part of one tribe. The black tribe. The human tribe. Look at what tribalism has done to places like Nigeria or Liberia."

And Jane woud say, "Ah, those West Africans are all crazy anyway. You know they used to be cannibals, don't you?"

And Zeituni would say, "You sound just like your father, Barry. He also had such ideas about people."

Meaning he, too, was naive; he, too, liked to argue with history. Look what happened to him.... (pages 347-348)

What had happened to the elder Obama was that as a Luo in a time of Kalenjin dominance, tribalism had lost him his political position, his status, his wealth, his power, leaving his family to bicker over the small inheritance bequeathed to them.

In looking at all of this, Obama suffered some rather poignant impressions of Africa. He doesn't attempt to paper the problems over, perhaps in part because of what on old friend of his father, the historian Dr. Rukia Odero, told him when he and Auma visited her in her Nairobi home:

"Truth is usually the best corrective." (page 434)

For the moment, I'll leave it at that...