MUSIC: Dela's Adabu, ft. H_art The Band

O my goodness! What a hit Adabu is gonna be, already! Is what I'm thinking, as I indicated in a tweet on September 3. Adabu was published on YouTube only on September 2, 2016.

Suddenly, in September, Kenyan artistes are, thanks in large part to the launch of Trace Mziki on DSTV's Channel 323, right at the heart of the African pop music scene previously, and still, dominated by Nigerians and Tanzanians. And Dela and H_art The Band are right up there with the best. Victoria Kimani was a fine trailblazer in this quantum leap, of course. But Dela's Adabu is what I really want to say something about just now.


Click to watch the video

Adabu is a Swahili word whose broad meaning is torn somewhat between character and habit; habit, which is also known in Swahili as tabia. Indeed, adabu veers into another path, toward what we may call "respectfulness" or, hopefully, (good)manners.

Dela's Adabu is a wonderful song, with a tinge of dhahabu (a Swahili word for gold). She wants love, and some tutoring about manners and a manner of things that revolve around love. 

 As the video starts, we find her in her abode, in that rising mode that's at once nagged with fuzzy questions for the day and anticipatory. She's fixing to leave and, right at her doorstep, to enter/re-enter a world that must be whatever it must, post her fixing. And, shy tho she be, she leaves. In a flourish of loud and preciously abstract black-and-white stripes of color, Dela walks out of her place, in full view, and into our wide-eyed gaze. She walks with a zebra's gracefulness and purpose, her body finely toned. 

Adabu is a subtle outpouring of sung and restrained love, from Dela's very public and very private soul. H_art The Band receives her with open arms when she steps out -- even though her own arms be hesitant -- singing lovingly in a melodious tone that has all the infectiousness of Cupid's arrow: "Songa karibu yangu mamii!" The same H_art who, as one, are stars in their own right, and who are wholly comfortable in their own skins, where ever they be in this song. And who are bountifully talented.

There's lovely tonality here. There's poetry. Love's the earnest refrain: "Songa karibu yangu mamiii!"



PS: Here's more talent to affirm Diva Dela's talent: Weche Tek

MUSIC (Kenya): Here's H_ART THE BAND's Ode to Beauty and Love ~ "Nikikutazama"

Nikikutazama, a Kiswahili phrase for "when I look at you", has an undeniable happiness-inducing beat about it. The artistes, likewise, have a happy, calm and collected, comedic mien. Truly infectious.

A few months ago I was at a Kenyan wedding in Nairobi where the chorus of this anthem of a song was cheerfully and naughtily 'misread' by the MC, a well-known comedian, as: "O Aoko O, O Aokoo..." 

Aoko, it so happens, is a girl's name. In DhoLuo it means, as I reckon, "Girl from the Outside". And on that fine (sunny, sunny) Saturday aft, when matrimony happily joined two ethnic identities, it was promptly added to the bride's name -- a Samburu beauty (with a name that seems to trace back to the era of the pyramids) getting married to a fine Luo groom. 


I don't think that Aoko features in the extant Samburu dictionary, or vocabulary. Perhaps it will in the distance. But no matter. Everyone was so much the happier for that union on that wonderful day. Me and mine certainly were.

Nikikutazama is an ode to beauty. And to Love.

Click here to watch the song's video clip

MUSIC: Susumila's "Ihale" is a Kenyan Gem

I'm looking for good African music, not good Nigerian or Kenyan or South African or Ghanaian or Congolese or Tanzanian or Ugandan or Angolan music. I'm not finding enough Kenyan pop music to fill one or two Saturday or Sunday afternoons of 'down-time' without too many encores. But I've just found another good Kenyan song, Susumila's Ihale. It's a gem.

Ihale is even more musical (with a more adventurous use of voice) than Obe Baba, which I said some nice things about just a day or so ago. The visuals are just as good, and in parts, I think, better. There's more energy here. More creative, and more 'competitive', body language. A touch of Naija mannerism, in fact.

I like the self-confident use of Kiswahili in Ihale. Susumila does not hesitate to flaunt his poetic licence in his use of language. Credit to his Director and Producer too. Give me a song I like, on my own terms, and I'll play and write about it -- regardless of which part of Africa it's from. Simple as that.

Of course I like Sauti Sol's Sura Yako and Nerea. Still, Sauti Sol, as a band, needs to be more fecund than it's been -- and not by doing a sort of Nishike and/or Nerea Remix. Sura Yako ft. Iyanya is already remixed, with mixed results. One or two songs a year will not take you far, in a field "overpopulated" by very hard-working and enterprising Nigerian artistes.

Of course I like  Elani's Kookoo.

Of course I like Victoria Kimani's Show.

Of course I like H_ART THE BAND's Nikikutazama.

Other Kenyan musicians whose work I have tweeted or blogged, or will tweet or blog, appreciations of can be found at my twitter (@MauriYambo) or on my blog. More is to come.