Political and social commentary are not the exclusive domain of so-called «conscious music». In this essay, cultural analyst Joyce Nyairo examines the content of popular «love» songs and pop in Nairobi for what they say about power relations, sex politics, and economic realities of the city. The best place to find the real values of a people may yet be in their popular, «commercial» music, she argues.

Some time in 2009 (or was it 2008?) I was at a Ford Foundation grantee meeting hosted by the School of Journalism at the University of Nairobi, when a member of the then nubile Sauti Sol, Willis Austin Chimano, I believe, made the declaration that his group was the first Kenyan band to record socially-conscious music. I gasped. If I remember correctly, I wasn’t very successful in hiding my dismay as I flagged the definitive record of Gabriel Omolo’s 1972 blockbuster hit, «Lunch Time» for its portrayal of economic injustice in the city. Watching the clock, I withheld my interpretation of the potential for revolution contained in a military band trumpet blaring in 1976 that «city life is tough and food expensive» (Maroon Commandoes, «Charonyi ni Wasi»).

I am not sure of the extent to which a lack of awareness of one’s predecessors affects the making of new music. Certainly, the opportunities for remixes, sampling, and cover versions will be missed, but in what other ways might the music made today suffer a deficit from not knowing what was made before it? Socially conscious music is not simply born of an awareness of the times in which we live, it must reflect an understanding of the roots of injustice and the ways in which our art has, over time, engaged with those injustices. When has this art succeeded in defining injustices in memorable ways, in projecting better tomorrows; and when has it failed to resonate with our popular struggles?

Commentaries on Class and Gender

Today’s popular struggles, if social media debates are anything to go by, center a lot on difficulties in romantic relationships and popular hits echo these concerns. One of the biggest hits from 2021 is Bensoul’s «Nairobi». Is Bensoul singing about a new phenomenon or is he giving us a new grammar with which to grasp our age-old circumstances of win and lose in the game of love? Watching the official music video, and listening keenly to the song’s lyrics, I find connections to several hit songs from our yesteryears, like Sam Kahiga’s «Suga Mami» (1974), Nguashi N’timbo’s «Shauri Yako» (1983), Freshly Mwamburi’s «Stella» (1992) and Sammy Muraya’s «Mama Kiwinya» (2000).

As markers of a fast-urbanizing Kenya, these songs echo and reinforce gender relations that Bensoul’s «Nairobi» amplifies, however unconsciously. Their tone might be cynical as in the case of Kahiga and Bensoul, filled with moral outrage in the way of Muraya, or marked by dismay and defeat in the way of «Stella» and «Shauri Yako», but without exception, these ballads of love betrayed are commentary on class and gender.

Great lyricists bring to their art a fresh take, a progressive argument, on an old conversation. Bensoul’s «Nairobi» is an old take, a recycled prejudice, on heterosexual romance. It plays within the cultural norms of policing and censuring women’s desire to the point where men can prey, define the agenda, and retain the power in relationships. In Kahiga’s «Suga Mami» and Muraya’s «Mama Kiwinya» the women are cast as aberrations to the social order because they are older than their male lovers. Likewise, Bensoul’s «Nairobi» limits a woman’s desire, this time to a single male partner. It is a ballad aimed at stroking the egos of men and inciting them to be dominant in relationships far more than it is a discussion of fair-play in romance.

Was «Nairobi» a response to Bensoul’s earlier number, «Lucy» (2019)? If skewed gender roles underline Bensoul’s «Nairobi», made worse by the official music video where a man is bathed by his female lover, in «Lucy» Bensoul asserts a woman’s freedom to choose.

Lucy, I love you
Lakini kama tuko wengi (if you have other suitors)
Tusilazimishe, tusilazimishe penzi
… Don’t force it, don’t force it

In the face of fast-rising numbers of femicide across the country one might be forgiven for rushing to embrace «Lucy» as an anthem for the anti-Gender-Based Violence movement. Within that movement, Eric Wainaina’s «Selina» – from his 2011 album Love and Protest – is something of a holy grail, providing words to live by when lovers quarrel, «Hio si heshima, watu wazima huongea» (that’s a lack of respect. Adults talk/discuss).

Misadvice, and Worse

Reflecting on social movements and their need for anthems to popularize a cause brings to mind Sauti Sol’s «Nerea» (2015). The song revisits one of the most divisive issues in national debate that led to the passing of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010. I do not know the story behind this song, whether the pro-life/anti-abortion movement funded it at any point in its making and marketing, but I do know that as far as social consciousness goes, «Nerea» misses the mark. A boy band halting an abortion by exploiting promises steeped in religious faith – «Mungu akileta mtoto, analeta sahani yake» (When God brings a child, He brings her plate too) – smirks of shirking responsibility.

Coming from a boy band, «Nerea» should have placed greater emphasis on fatherhood, a demonstration of men stepping up as fathers who bear the burden, mould, protect, and nurture, beyond the two-word order given to the song’s title character and woman in question, Nerea, «mlete nitamlea» (bring her/him, I will raise her/him). That nitamlea promptly loses the commitment of providing for the child in the very next line, which assigns God this work of resource provision.

The song falls even more flatly because in the very next stanza it burdens the child with growing up into greatness as a justification for being born. So, if one can’t grow, against numerous odds, to be a Mandela, Makeba, Obama, Lupita, and so on, one doesn’t deserve to be born?

Beyond worries about providing for a child, why might Nerea want an abortion? The song’s limited point of view gives her desires no voice. Perhaps she wanted to remain in school, or travel the world, or get married. Maybe she didn’t like her lover's face or genes, or maybe she has no desire to be a mother, ever. Her freedom is spurned over that of a potential Mandela.

Reimagining Freedom

My focus here on Nairobi’s love songs is a deliberate attempt to avoid the age-old trap of linking protest music to genres. Reggae, hip hop, genge, and spoken word are habitually thought of as the headquarters of lyrical political consciousness so that what King Kaka, Juliani, and Octopizzo sing is more readily seen as protest music, while Afro-fusion love ballads and so-called gospel music pass off as safe messages of love and faith. But because love songs reflect our deepest humanity, we must always interrogate them for the way they frame relations and define selflessness, multiple freedoms, and justice.

In the same way, thinking through gospel songs – like Nyashinski’s «Mungu Pekee» (2016) – might reveal more than the local artiste’s need to generate audiences by switching genres. In «Mungu Pekee», we hear more than a God-imbued fight against greed, gossips, and other threats. Beyond the protagonist’s boasts of securing the bag, we hear an analysis of everyday struggles in a low-trust economy: «sina kesi mahakamani au deni za majirani» (I have no cases before the courts nor debts owed to neighbours). The unspoken query, «why must life be so hard?» lingers. To be sure, Nyashinski does not denounce impunity with the ferocity of Juliani («Machozi ya Jana» [Yesterday’s Tears], 2017) or King Kaka («Wajinga Nyinyi» [You Fools], 2019), but he does invite questions that cannot be answered by bluster and mere allegiance to Christian faith.

Do we place too much reliance on decidedly obvious protest music to steer liberation? At the end of 2019, I argued that the passionate reception of «Wajinga Nyinyi» would peter out rather than instantaneously galvanize a revolution not least because his outward-pointing contempt squandered the chance to galvanize solidarity by saying sisi (us) rather than nyinyi (you). How could this expletive become our new idiom of freedom?

Protest music demands social change, it crystallizes 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.

The classic that will lift our consciousness beyond this rut of me-first and me-only values that define our society at every turn – in the way Wainaina’s «Nchi ya Kitu Kidogo», Gidi Gidi Maji Maji’s «Unbwogable», and the context-adapted hymn, «Yote Yawezekana» steered us to the end of the Moi regime – will be one whose score stirs the memory of old protests and whose poetry redefines the commitment to fairness and to doing good that we all yearn for in love, and in public life. But revolutions are not spontaneous soliloquies. Revolutions are choreographed orchestras driven by clear strategies and dogged forces. Therefore, the song that will drive our next moment of freedom will need the backing and promotion of geniuses in the work of social networking.