Showing posts with label Pepeta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pepeta. Show all posts

Monday, January 08, 2018

Chin Bees' Kababaye


Chin Bees are an upstart group with all the self-assurance needed to get their voice heard on this increasingly star-studded continent of ours. Kababaye demonstrates that their art runs deep. It is only slightly less boisterous than Pepeta, but just as inspired -- and just as finely feathered. It is more thoughtful, and even more cerebral. But it's just as attuned to the dance-hall.


So we get this subtle idea that the group isn't ever going to be a flash in the pan. It does its thing with no iota of doubt. If that's subconsciously so, that's even greater. Kudos to the social environment which has obviously given them free rein to do their musical thing.

Kababaye goes on for 3:45 minutes, a duration which is longer than the emerging norm these days! Most probably, it's commerce, and commerce alone, that's spearheading the slide toward this new ab-norm.  

Here are the Kababaye lyrics [Mostly in Swahili]

Wednesday, January 03, 2018

MUSIC (Tanzania): Chin Bees are a Blast in Pepeta

Released in March 2017, and directed by Rahul Kumar Singh, Pepeta launches with what a dramatic beat! Chin Bees sustain it to the end, in this 3:00-minute spectacle. These youthful Tanzanian artistes, suddenly sprung upon the continental stage literally by storm, are a Tsunami dressed up in full hip-hop regalia. They are here plainly to assert their unbridled artistic presence. Is all. 

They might as well be from LA, if that's a useful allusion in any way. They have a "foreign accent" -- but what's "foreign" to world-beating post-Millennials? And English isn't someone else's language. It's theirs, just as Swahili is. And they love themselves -- just as they are!

WATCH VIDEO: Pepeta

One word runs throughout the song, by design. Its Pepeta. You guessed right, it is the song's title. No one will tire of it -- looks like. Pepeta really means to dribble (or bounce). It subliminally alludes to a precious thing, such as a "diamond" -- or a "pearl". Pepeta is a pearl of a song, looked at one way. Now, dance to it! There should be a conquest of hearts at the end of this supernova of a song -- whenever, wherever, it ends.