The Times They Are A-Changin: So You Think You Can Dance??

There's a new dance show in the mix already after we got insanely bored by the KCSE style judging and CU vote factor in the previous one whose only bright side was the cyphers by Joey. Sakata is not that bad although for the first two weeks thay couldn't spell the word PRIZE and kept talking of a 1 million shilling PRICE. One thing I am sure of is that our mothers and fathers shake their heads as they watch these shows with us and wonder why they say its a dance compe yet nobody dances throughout the show. Their best recollection of dancing was when a nervous bow-tied fellow approached an equally nervous sista in a full pleated skirt and asked "May I have this dance?" and it proceeded in a respectful fashion, the only person allowed to overutilize the pelvic area being none other than Elvis.



Well, and if things got out of hand, if you had taken a little more brandy than your systems could carry, people would call up Daudi Kabaka and do what is called the twist. Twas a really a soberizing dance, I've been told with all that gyration. Thank goodness for whoever came up with soul music, without it the lads would never have gotten closer than a long ruler to women's butts on the dance floor. And of course there was the bump , the unattainable MJ's moonwalk and break beat dancing for early discoverers of hip hop and related genres. I remember going to my pals house as a kid to watch his sister and her pals slide in a Koffi Olomide tape into the VCR and proceed to simulate various strains of the Ndombolo dance...mighty hilarious.



Up to this point, the development of modern dance in Kenya was a representation of the times, a reflection of the mood of society our identity was still ingrained in it, somehow... Then enter the iPod generation. We lost the plot somewhere in between a few facebook wallposts and an episode of Str8up. What happens nowadays is that we SING ALONG TO A DANCE instead of DANCE ALONG TO A SONG. The music industry is forcefully raping the dance industry and taking over its function yet ab initio these two are meant to be seperate. The music industry makes the songs, then the dance industry comes along to find an appropriate dance to accompany the songs. The line between dance and song has become sooooooo thin that some dancers who can't raise an octave think they can sing, look at SUPERLITO (who has his own talent show coming up) for instance...its sad, quite sad.



Quick example is the Crank Dat wave that hit the entire globe. Absolutely no content but the dance was so catchy we forgot all about that. I was a victim myself...I confess to have tried all the crank dat styles that have existed on YouTube- Superman, Batman, Lion King, Robocop, Aquaman, Homeless Man, Rocket etc etc. What does "crankin dat" mean anyway? If you didn't do the Shawty-Lo Hello They Know Running Man and you call yourself a drink dancer, just grab a .45 and kill yourself..twas mighty fun too with the correct amount of alcohol in the system.



Well there came cooler versions in the form of the Stanky Legg - basically pretending one of your legs is criplle and making clockwise-anticlockwise sweeps with the said leg, prolly inspired by a gangsta in the Bronx trying to escape from the police after being shot in the leg - and the Jerk - this one is hard to describe, I just have to show you. Something about a nigga trying to be white or something, a marraige of the races, skinny jeans nerdy looks and all that.



It would also be easy to pick out them pious types on the dance floor courtesy of the CU dance style popularized by MOG and the Mukorino fella remind me of his name please? And of course there is the sweep and gully creeper from our cousins in the Carribean Islands. Yeah, even these are hard to explain in themselves. I will not fail of course to big up my bwoys for trying to diversify with a few homegrown dance styles; the sgelemba, Usain Bolt and Cocaine...



What I am trying to ask myself from a universal point of view is if we are loosing the whole point of music production by simply basing them on a dance or is this just the evolution of creativity? Should I release and album based on Sgelemba featuring Mr. Rural Swag from Big Brother? What happened to the fat lady who couldn't do nothing but sing a song? Yeah, maybe this blog post has no point at all, just sayin hello LOL...We kids are just funny! Questions and comments always welcome. Dont forget to watch Malkia wa Chakacha on KBC every Sato night. You will wonder who is winning if alll the judges say to each and everyone is, "Umecheza Vizuri".

Pass Me The Salt, S'il Vous Plaît?

Often, I am inspired to turn back and stare right into the heart of Sodom and Gomorrah right into the lovely filth of it all, at the shopkeeper of lopsided weights, at a top official of KEBS deep under the covers with a female colleague, perhaps testing the veracity of Hot condoms, I don’t know; and against the current, sometimes I choose to stand and turn back and admire it all, the panoramic view…of civil rights activists chaining themselves to police stations, women with testes breaking world athletic records (Isn’t it amazing nowdays that women have the gall to tell men to suck their imaginary dicks? Phallus envy is at an all time high currently – Freud would have had multiple orgasms if he was alive. Oh the pleasures that Death snatches from us!). Like fireworks or shooting stars, I gaze up at the sight of Kenyans calling other Safaricom subscribers on the top floor, nay, the helipad of KICC all in the name of Supa Ongea… Yes, keep talking. Oh “Yes We Créu!” That’s the shrink’s secret weapon. Keep you engaged in endless banter about useless trivia on Zain Africa Challenge and twitter trending topics surrounding your feelings about Tyra’s new hairdo, long enough to forget your collective socio-economic wounds going by the collective name of Vain Africa’s Challenges… long enough to forget that you are better dead than alive… long enough to get you not to resolve to the most sensible thing - to slit your throat or take a double dose of Viagra… They are ever alert. When you drift back into the uncomfortable silence that brings back suicidal tendencies, Dr. Phil will swarm you with hypnotic sounds to engage your mind with enough phonetic weight to squash down your 1200cc brain, cut it down to Neanderthal size because you are thinking too smart for your own safety:

“Ringera MUST go! Ringera must go, even if it means cutting my balls off, Ringera must go!”

“Safaricom Board of Governors is pleased to award our esteemed shareholders with a 10 cent per share dividend!”

“Beyonce had the best video of all time!! I’m just sayin’!”

“We are sorry to announce a 3 month power rationing programme effected in your best interests just so that you can get more alone time with your wives and salvage the disastrous divorce rate in this country…erm and yes Kibaki has only one wife.”

“Patricia must go! Patricia, that slut must go…Kwani she thinks we don’t have croaky voices to sing for our husbands and boyfriends when they get back from work? Burn that bitch for chucking that old-geezer-who-cant-sing-a-Nameless-song-even-with-a-double-shot-of-cocaine, Debarl!”

And they engage us. And they entertain us, they keep us busy so that we don’t think of things that are ‘dangerous’ for us. ..What choice have we? Without food to eat, water to drink, electricity to think up new ideas and condoms to eject the stress away…who are we to speak righteously about democracy or to think up a new laws of physics and science…who are you, niggertrash? Eat what you can chew, chew what you can swallow, swallow what you can shit, shit what you can flush. Anything outside the province of that is the anachronistic dash for the edge of the cliff…

But I still choose to slow down, turn around and look back at the filth and become part of the completness of the city's ruins. I doesn’t matter that I will transform into a pillar of salt, for salt is the universal symbol of satisfaction of need. Salt is the master of food, says Prophet Muhammad. Without salt, the food you eat won’t taste that good will it? I choose to be the spice of life. For you to pass around the dinner table and enjoy your ugali managu or Thanksgiving turkey, so that y’all can be qualitatively nourished, sufficiently nourished to be sufficiently philanthropic to think outside the boxes containing the instruction manuals that control us and, if push comes to shove, get rid of the box itself.

I choose to be cheap.

I choose to be hard.

So that, maybe you sprinkle me atop your wounds…

And hopefully pinch and lick me when it starts to hurt.