Just A Band _ Kudish! (The Sound of Soup)

Here's the thing: around these sides, we don't take the concept of the single THAAAT seriously. The farthest a local artist usually goes in terms of releasing a single could be possibly a music video, right? And they have every reason for doing so, because basically Kenyans hardly buy albums, so why even bother making CD/tape/vinyl singles with rare goodies like special remixes and unreleased stuffs? The only local peeps I know who have released a single in tape and CD is Swahili Nation & Dr. Alban (correct me if I am wrong). I even bought that Hakuna Matata cassette in 1999 and was sorely disappointed at the time because I just couldn't understand why the heck all it had was Hakuna Matata + Remixes, :) but it later kinda grew on me.
Many times though, I've felt that there have been some massive local tunes that deserve at least some special retouching at least, if not to be packed into a single. Simply put, so many of the local stuff that bang in the club or rotate on radio haven't had all the juice squeezed out of them. And who can better remind us of this than Just A Band? Yes, they're back in the kitchen, after revolutionizing the Kenyan music scene and for the first time putting us on the universal social media map after reviving our forgotten superhero Makmende and dishing out an acceptable serving of localised house, chill, funk, disco and a host of other 'foreign' genres in their hit albums Scratch To Reveal and 82.

This time, Just A Band have whipped up a collection of remixes they made for their live shows and DJ sets since their first appearance in 2008. Aptly named Kudish! The Sound of Soup, this compilation brings together a bunch of rare ingredients of their own and other artistes in just the right quantities to come up with a veritable feast of minimal, chill, house,afro-pop and genge; much like very good soup. The kind of good soup that reminds you of your mother's cooking...the compilation has quite the nostalgic feel to it given the impeccable sampling from classic techno tunes and Kenyan genge and boomba.


They revive Jua Cali's Nakuroga with their Koroga Mix, mashing up the genge rhymes with Juliet's Avalon. Nonini goes all minimal techno on Keroro (Safisha Mix), something I wouldn't mind bumping to in a club at all. Fly reminds me of the first highly underestimated compilation album by Ogopa DJs, remember it? Mpishi Bora Megamix (my fave track on this) brings together the two big Jomino Ent. tracks Banjuka and Tichi with some dope Ludacris sampling. They remix Poa Sana, the tune by that Coca-cola Popstars group SEMA. I just have to repeat that the sampling here is as impeccable as it is diverse though Daft Punk and Madonna make notable appearances in Around the World vs. Oh Ndio and Mke Nyumbani Mashup. JAB also throw in proper remixes of their own tunes including Ha-he and Forever People.

All in all, this compilation serves largely as a 30 minute historical timepiece. Playing it around a bunch of friends will immediately spark of stories and memories of the late 90s and early 2000s: when Ogopa DJs ruled, those njaros we used to have, stuff that used to show on TV, all the parties and good times we had etc etc. This is something most Kenyans would love to add to their music collection to play together with the older stuff.

The best bit about all this is that the compilation is available as a FREE DOWNLOAD HERE, so cop it as soon as you can. You can also check out JAB's second video art exhibition, KUDISHNYAO![TRNSMSSN_II] currently on show at the Goethe-Institut, Nairobi. The exhibition will culminate in a Finissage on 4th June with a DJ mixset by these guys.

Eek-A-Mouse (with Michigan & Smiley) live @ Reggae Sunsplash 1982

"I don't DJ, DJ talk...I man sing..." _ Eek-A-Mouse, Intro/Ganja Smuggling (Live @ Reggae Sunsplash 1982)

One August, at a park somewhere in Montego Bay, Jamaica, a sizeable crowd had gathered for the annual Reggae Sunsplash Festival. The crowd was a bit hushed, not what you would normally expect from a crowd so thoroughly weeded that the only comparison that could be made was that of Woodstock. many theories emerged later to explain the docile nature of this crowd. One of these theories pointed towards the recent death of perhaps the most famous reggae icon to date, Bob Marley. So, perhaps the nation was still mourning the passing of Tuff Gong. Others pointed towards the weed - anyone who has consumed A LOT of marijuana in a short interval will often testify how embarrassingly docile it made them. However, the generally chilled nature of the crowd provided a rare opportunity for those headlining the festival to come up with performances of amazing clarity in a different atmosphere.

Sure enough, one of the performers did not disappoint. Eek-A-Mouse was quickly becoming a popular artist at the time, having just released his second album, Wa-Do-Dem with two massive singles from it, Ganja Smuggling and Wa-Do-Dem receiving massive airplay from Jamaica's radio stations. He had a unique style of singing which he christened "sing-jaying" that set him apart from all the deejays of his time (Jamaicans curiously referred to artists as DJs, sort of an equivalent of the Emcee in hip hop culture and those who we would normally call DJs were called Selectors).

Backed up by The Sagittarius Band while strutting his lanky 6' 6" frame up and down the stage and posing outrageously every once in a while, Eek-A-Mouse delivered one of the best live (dub) reggae performances ever, resulting in a live album together with the equally popular Michigan and Smiley. Eek-A-Mouse's half of the album is nothing short of a time machine. In less than a minute, you will be taken back to that very day of the festival and it is very hard not to imagine that you are part of the crowd, given the astonishing clarity of the performance. The crowd is equally attentive as it is responsive given how it cheers just at the right time.

The setlist is just as good and the back-up band transform the songs to give them a new dub feel that is just as enjoyable as their original album versions. I dare add that the live version of Ganja Smuggling is way better than that in the Wa-Do-Dem album. He then follows that signature tune with Hire and Removal then the political Neutron Bomb that chronicles the Cold War in a very entertaining way as he talks about Brehznev, Reagan, America in Afghanistan and the beef about the Falkland Islands. He finally finishes off with his most popular tune Wa-Do-Dem to a cheering crowd.

I consider this album one of the best live albums ever made and a must-listen for anybody who loves reggae music or just loves going for live band concerts. A curious thing about this album however is that no one seems to agree when it was made or released. Many place the concert itslef as having gone down in 1982, and the album having been released in 1983. Others claim the album is a 1984 production. Its all very very confusing, but at least everybody agrees that this performance actually took place at some point in time. Here's a video of Eek-A-Mouse performing a track not eventually included in the live album, Ghetto Living:



Otherwise, for a taste of the album, here's a download link. Enjoy.

Lost in Translation

“Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising.” _ Paul Valéry

Children are amazing, aren’t they? They are born into a world of shocking clarity and chaos. The sights, the sounds, the smells – its all shocking and amazing. Everything is so bright, everyone is so enormous and every sound is concert loud. For fleeting seconds post uterine evacuation before the first draughts of air assault their naked bottoms, the little ones are probably convinced they are in Heaven! Ah, the joys of tabula rasae! It is against this backdrop that everything we tell them is pure truth even in the presence of glaring contradictions. They also go out in the search of their own pure truths – monsters under beds, animals and insects that speak to them, whoever painted the sky blue etc etc. – and they find it quite bizarre that none of these things make any sense to us. They are still at the stage of heaping upon this cold and brutal world too much credit than we think it deserves.

I was such a child. A lucky child as well, being in the fortunate position to be able to read from a very early stage, surrounded by books everywhere and an equally determined mother. I read everything indiscriminately, children’s books, piece of paper thrown in the bin, gynecology books owned by a late aunt whom I’d never met, newspapers, dictionaries, a pocket size thesaurus with a curious looking kangaroo on its cover; I was obsessed. There was a great amount of joy derived from just knowing what a word meant. They were my mystery completed jigsaw puzzles, every word was a test by an unseen challenger who had put together a number of letters in a bunch and then he or she would sit back in satisfaction as the rest of us wondered what it meant.

Many times I’d chance upon a box of medicine and it would read in French “10 Comprimés”, and I would automatically assume it was a mistake of some kind and the writer intended to write the closest word to it that I knew – Compromise. 10 Compromises was what the box contained, at least according to my infantile mind. It would later take me quite a while and an eventual transition to puberty to understand what the devils trouser presses “Compromise” meant, and even longer to even decide to learn a bit of French, for what turned out to be mostly examinable purposes.

Yes, much later came the horrible French Teacher in Practice. A petite lady with stern features that betrayed a period of some sort of struggle now passed. If it were not for the thick glasses she wore, she would have looked much younger…and kinder. Kind she was not. Severe in every way possible. Right from day one, she spoke in fluent French, not once wavering into English like the German teacher in the nearby classroom. It was an amazing sight at first, the kind of shit you saw in movies with subtitles. The way that voice picked up the accents – up, down, up, down, aigu, grave, aigu, grave – it was like a bicycle ride through hills and valleys, like that rocking chair in a living room some few hundred miles away. That voice took us many places, but it mostly made us homesick and the day’s lunch would taste horrible after her. We loved her, yes, we loved her. At least I know I did.

All that changed soon. She became angrier by the day, she became a walking storm of emotion. Angry that nobody seemed to absorb anything she taught. It had suddenly dawned on her that we were as empty as outer space. It was nothing short of slam poetry. Many times she would reprimand us so loudly, it was a few decibels short of yells. Many times she would bang those small hands on the table when “ça va?” was met by blank stares. Judging from the fire in her eyes, I could tell she wanted to wipe us off the face of the earth so badly. And we hated her; at least I know I did. She lost a good bunch of us to the friendly looking guy in the German room too.

When her supervisors came, she acted something in between her Old Self and New Self, and then when they left she would close the door, lean against it as if the Italian mob had just left after forgiving a debt, then she turned around with a glowing face and dished out sweets to those of us who had behaved in front of her supervisors. Good behaviour entailed any attempts to mumble something as equally incoherent as whatever it was that escaped her mouth.


But still, she could not completely take away the fact that the whole exercise resembled a human being trying to communicate with slightly intelligent chicken that at least gave him a hearing – WE did a lot of cluck-clucking, complete with the Adam’s apple swallows. Sweets..that’s what she gave the “good” ones. Like little children. An empty, one-way selfish reward system. An exhibition of bad parenting at its finest. Mind control for the sake of her own peace of mind, never mind that some of us were on the brink of madness.Sweets…multi-coloured ones like the pills the nurses used to dish out in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Just like them, we were crazy people haunted by strange Germanic ghosts who spoke in tongues. We were like small babies, foaming in the mouth, unable to comprehend why we were born this way.

I hated her more and more. I hated her and her parochial ways. I was sure she equally loathed me back for my apparent sucrose intolerance, for my refusal to be “good” despite the fact that I was still completely ignorant, three weeks into the classes. She hated me for refusing to suck with her, for letting her suck alone and contributing in making her look bad in front of her grammar mafia friends...

I hated her as much as I needed her. She hated me as much as she needed me. And that was how it was meant to be. Compromise.

Compromise.

Comprimés.

A King Has Been Born

(I lifted this piece from my other blog that no one ever gets to read, sawa tu!)

Excerpts from a sermon held at a certain Anglican Church, a member of the Archdiocese of Kisumu on 25th December, 2007, at 9.30am:

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
PROVOSTEST - presiding clergy
BISHOP RITEST - delivers the sermon
FILOMENA - Choir-mistress
YO-YO - Youth Fellowship leader
HON. BENY O. O. -prominent church "investor"
CONGREGATION

PROVOSTEST

We are gathered here this Sunday ermm, I mean this wonderful Xmas morning. This is a very expectant day for all of us (casts a sly glance at FILOMENA, at least 3 months heavy).
Let me remind us that amongst us are those who don't share the Xmas spirit and wish to prey into our pockets for our small cash and cheap phones.
I see its a full house today. Turn to your neighbour and ask where he/she was last Sunday. Oh yes, any visitor amongst us? And by visitors I also mean those members who have been away since last Christmas.

(uncomfortable squirming in the pews)

Am tempted to call the clergy to say hallo to their secret wives!

(Appreciative laughter that jolts the marathon dozers to full concentration)

I will now welcome YO-YO for a few announcements.

(YO-YO walks up to the podium and unhooks the mic)

YO-YO

Eh semeni ma-youth. Praiseee Lord! Leo 4.30 kuna tea party ya kudeliberate njaro ya kugutuka bila kushtuka hii Boxin Day bana. . . Munajua sisi ndio 63% ya ma boxer so lazima tujiami jo! Msisahau orange eating party kesho. Msidanganywe ovyo vile Eve alithoriwa na Nyoka akazane na Ndizi na Sagodi aliwashow wamange Machungwa solo. Kumbe Sagodi amewascan, anawacheki na angle théta! Si munaona vile walipaishwa? (huge howl of laughter from the wings) Otherwise, contribution from last youth service was ksh. 645. Be blessed in the Lord!

(Applause)

PROVOSTEST

Let us now have intercessional prayers for our families and our country. Ummm (looks at the front row reserved for church"investors") Can Hon. Beny O. O. lead us in this?

(A murmer permeates the entire church. Clearly Prov. hasn't heard of the recent scandal where a certain " trifling gold digger" called up the Hon.'s wife, announcing she was pregnant with his child and its is rumoured she also described poor Beny's undergarments and the contents therein to 100% detail. At that instant, Prov's Motorola C113 beeps loudly, indicating a new text message which he scrolls through, red with embarrassment)

Well it seems Hon. Beny O. O. could not join us today but our prayers are his! (leads the intercession prayer session)
And now let us welcome our award-winning Choir Mistress, Filomena!

(Filomena approaches the mic)

FILOMENA

I presented this solo piece at the national Churches competition and it was declared the most uplifting solo piece. Enjoy!

(Clears her throat and delves into an 8-octave soprano performance in a language closer to opera and rises to an ear-splitting crescendo followed by awed silence.)

PROVOSTEST
(elated)

Didnt I tell you we had Pavarottis in our ministry? Now you have heard. . . May God bless dear Filomena and (coughs judiciously) her family. Now for the sermon, lets rise and sing Hymn Number That One to welcome the Ritest Reverend the Bishop for today's word.

(Congregation sings in a sort of semblance of unity as BISHOP RITEST takes his place at the podium, tapping the mic-head and occasionaly interjecting the singing with "Mic Check, 1 2, Mic Check. . .")

(The hymn fades out)

BISHOP

Let us open our Bibles at Matthew Chapter 2 (Reads aloud and briskly till verse 12) Yes. . .the Lord is showing a lot to us through this story of the 3 wise men or in Kiswahili, wale warefu watatu! As it had been prophesied, a king had ALREADY been born and they were just messengers of this inevitability to poor King Herod! Praise the Lord!

CONGREGATION

Amen!

BISHOP

I put it to you brethren, that we are in a similar situation as those 3 warefus. It is election season yet again but I am telling you our President has already been chosen. As far as I am the Bishop, the job has already been done and there is NOBODY who can change that destiny. . .with or without our votes. A king has been born to us!

(Appreciative murmurs all round. Bishop removes a white kerchief and wipes beads of sweat off his forehead)

Let us spring back to the Biblical text. Now, what would be the purpose of this new king? Herod thought he was doing fine by any standards. To him the best thing for the kingdom would be a sort of 'Herod Aendelee' approach to the politics of the day. But this new king was meant to bring change. . .a change that they really needed. Most of us first borns would not have survived the Herod Aendelee Campaign you know! But God had refused, HALLELUJAH!

(wild gesticulation from a certain quarter of the congregation, noticably all dressed in orange from head to toe)

Herods place had already been replaced! His seat was already sat on, Praise the Lord!

(Loud Amen from the same quarter)

Its time for our own change as well. . .as you know already, the market is overflowing with oranges, bananas, wipers and torches but GOD knows what you will take home so just OBEY OBEY OBEY if you want to be part of that change! If you don't then you will still be part of that change. . . . On the loosing side. Choose where you stand. . . God does not tolerate lukewarm uji. . .Are you with Herod's team or are you with the PEOPLE's team? And that is the word straight from the bowels of Heaven this Xmas Day. Halelujah!

(Standing ovation. .and from somewhere a scream of "Kazi ya Herod isiendelee!" met by cheers)

Let us now pray. . .

(A solemn reflective visage ensues)

Lord, as we come before you, we are in deep thought. Why is it that in all the election campaigns our city has been left out? Politicians have traversed every corner of this country - Eldoret, Naivasha, Nairobi, Kericho, Mombasa, El-Wak, Turkana, North Horr. . .but why do they shun Kisumu?! Oh Kisumu, Kisumu, Kisumu. Home of Tom Mboya, the first constitutional affairs Minister. . .KISUMU, oh Kisumu. Home of Ramogi Oginga Odinga, friend of Jomo Kenyatta. KISUMU! Home to Achieng' Oneko, great freedom fighter. Kisumu. Great land of old . . . Kisumu. . . The centre of the Railway. KISUMU! Home of the first teachers, doctors, and learned friends! Kisumu. Where planes from Cairo en route to Cape Town stopped over in the olden days. Kisumu, oh, Kisumu! The only city in the equator. . .oh Kisumu!

(Shouts of YES LORD on every mention of Kisumu)

Then what has happened Lord? Look at us now. . . Kisumu. Land of the poorest of the poor. Kisumu. Backyard of hyacinth. Kisumu! Small city without smoke. Kisumu. Surely. . . HAVE WE BEEN FORGOTTEN?
I know you have not abandoned us Lord. A time has come for this poor neglected city like it came for that folktown of Bethlehem. A time has come for us to RULE! Halellujah! A king has been born to us! Thank you, Lord! Thank you Jesus! Thank you Lord!

(The entire church rises to its feet as if manipulated by a superhuman force. Everyone is shouting, leaping up and down and speaking in tongues for the rest of the sermon, the only exception being flabbergasted kids and a group later identified as Election Observers. "Joy To The World" belts out from the church organ. .)

. . .END. . .

Three Funerals

APRIL 23

"I don't believe in painted roses/Or bleeding hearts /While bullets rape the night of the merciful/I'll see you again/When the stars fall from the sky/And the moon has turned red/Over One Tree Hill" - U2

I'd never met him, and all along I had felt strangely relieved by this fact. Something in me always told me that there would be a lot of pretending to do if I ever did meet him. He struck me as somebody to steer clear from, especially since I was the type of person who interacted quite often with one of his daughters in a way that was not likely to please him. When it came to his daughters there was no room of joking around. Three daughters he had… and he raised these beautiful girls in a way that showed he was quite satisfied with the uniformity of his offspring. No extra expectations. To a certain extent, I think he raised them like boys, more than boys actually... He raised them to be inheritors of the wealth of his property and all the life lessons that he had learnt along the way.

His second born daughter came to be a testament to how well he had brought them up. Independent and with a radically different mindset than the average girl who expected a certain degree of mush from the menfolk (she abhors that) and has her wedding all planned out decades in advance (she never understands that) or expected not to pay on first dates (she always insists on chipping in if not paying half), she became my "boy", my 'nigga" or something of that sort from the day we met. She always approached all the crazy things we were up to with a sense of gung ho that was rare to find in females. Heck, she'd even help me check out girls every once in a while!

Still, I always felt his latent omnipresence around his daughter even though I never got to meet him until that day. Right there, in the extra portions of vodka I put in her glass was the recollection of him warning his kids of unimaginable consequences if he ever caught them drinking. I felt the same pressure as I wrote down white lies for her to try on her dad when we'd sneak hundreds of miles away from town. The closest I came to contact with him was when I went through his CD collection - a man of diverse and good taste. I even found a copy of Joshua Tree in there:

Joshua Tree

So the day of reckoning had finally come. Me, him and her in one setting, barely a few feet from each other. Him, completely silent in a coffin... she in full black, completely un-G'ed and broken beyond description but still strong and resplendent through the stream of tears that never seemed to end. Me? Well, there I was unnerved and completely short circuited. Clueless... Without the chance to at least pretend that I was to some degree a decent enough kind of guy to be one of his daughter's closest friends. There was nothing to be said, nothing to pretend about like I'd planned all along...nothing. Nothing.

R.I.P. Prof. Duncan Ngare

***************************************

APRIL 30

It has been 368 days since you had your last earthly breath right before my very own brother, a frightened nurse still trying for the next 20 minutes to perform CPR and a bunch of equally bewildered relations too scared to admit that the world had just lost a unique and great legend. The nation and the world proceeded to swiftly mourn. I, however, began to recall how I'd mourned your death eight years too early in a case of mistaken identity. The genuine sorrow of a child is nearly impossible to surpass in quality so I dared not attempt to go one better.

Instead, the night before the funeral, I sat among hundreds of others from far and wide right under the tree you loved to shelter under yourself and listened as stories about you were revived. Everyone was eager to share - no matter the age, tribe, gender or status - showing how broadly you interacted with your world and tried to understand each and everyone from their point of view. Boardroom anecdotes from CEOs, political speeches and songs, and even that boy (now a teacher) who you saw walking on the road alone deep in Central Province having been chased from school and returned with the child to pay his fees.

The next day, two presidents and a prime minister each fired on with the story telling and laughter as if they were in the privacy of their living rooms with trusted friends - your interpretation of the Migingo issue where you claimed Kenyan fishermen were allowed by international law the right of hot pursuit of fish escaping into the Ugandan side of the lake, when you joked that a pothole was hole big enough to put a hole in it etc etc. Everyone was simply intoxicated by warmth and nostalgia, it hardly felt like a period of mourning.

As part of the second generation of your descendants, it may take me a lifetime to even get to hear half of your stories but that will be more than enough. It is the fireside-like warmth of it that I want to bask in still. And a piece of you always comes out so perfectly in some of us - a funny one here, a fearless crusader there, a big hearted one all over, an eloquent orator, a determined farmer and of course a number of us with more than one of your qualities. We are part of the unfinished story, a story that is bound to go on for a very very long time. The pressure is on me sometimes, given that I inherited your name, but I look at your shoes and immediately understand - those shoes cannot be filled, only shined...shined to perfection so that we can see our own reflection on them, hoping we will see somebody who at least resembles you...

R.I.P. Grandpa

*********************************

MAY 2

Ten years. They'd been trying to get him for nearly ten years. then all of a sudden, they cornered him in his own fortress and gave him the lead-to-head treatment. Yes, a bunch of commandos obliterated the pesky Arab who had been image of unrestrained terror and death for the past decade and a half. Finally, the world could breath a collective sigh of relief. Thousands of miles away, a President watched his approval ratings soar and crowds gathered by their hundreds to celebrate this long overdue event.

As the commandos dragged the corpse onto their boat on the shores of Pakistan and began their journey with their precious catch, some politicians suddenly became staunch Muslims and remembered that the body should be immediately buried according to Islamic practices. But then, the ship was already hundreds of miles from the shore and they couldn't risk some fundamentalist scientists exhuming the body and using the DNA to clone another terror headache, so they were like "Fuck the we-aren't-at-war-with-Islam strategy.." and then they buried him at sea. HE WAS BURIED AT SEA - LIKE A VIKING WARRIOR, NOT A DAMN MUSLIM!!!

I am glad for those who have been able to get some sort of closure after the above turn of events - victims of terror, all those who have lost their family members and loved ones through the acts orchestrated by this man deep in the ocean somewhere with a bullet lodged in his brains. Some justice has finally been seen to be done, no? I however remain anxious about the aftermath and possible Al-Qaeda reprisals that may emerge from this, more so in the United States...am worried about Pakistan, am worried about how this will impact the situation in Afghanistan...there's more to be anxious about from my point of view, really.

I am also curious about the way the world has been kept at arm's length when it came to authenticating the identity of this man who was shot in the head along with that suspicious burial which has now turned to be a spit in the face of Islamic practices...who thought of that, really? Who?

R.I.P. Osama Bin Laden

****************************************

All of the sentiments I have expressed can apply to the three men interchangeably, depending on the context. For each of these men, there is at least someone out there who was overjoyed or greatly saddened or inspired by their deaths. That is how Death works, I guess...