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Shake Yo Bam Bam, their latest, was released less than two weeks ago, On August 19. Its YouTube views stood at 242,262 when I began writing this piece earlier this afternoon and now, as I prepare to click Publish, stand at 243,927 views. This is a very refreshing video. It gives a real boost to East African music, as this region gets set to contribute its fair share of African pop music, now dominated by giant Nigeria, in terms not so much of the quantum of actively engaged artistes, but of the minimum number of singles that should be produced each year by an artiste worthy of the name. I think that this number stands at 3 to 4 singles each year, as suggested by the work ethic one detects among Nigerians.
The visuals in Shake Yo Bam Bam are good. I can identify three aspects of that: (1) Funky garbs -- alright, threads -- with, I think, an optimistic rather than retro feel about the dress code. Nairobi feel. Nay, Old Eastlands feel, if you really want to know. But if retro, then, it so happens, a return, somewhat, to America's "electric slide" genre of the '90s. Not a crime at all.
(2) Hi-definition motion, and colors put together with refined thinking and cool passion.
(3) Well choreographed dance routines; which is a nice departure from the drab, long-running habits we've been used to and taken as a given. A nice turn, too, away from the "ghetto mentality" which confuses raw earth and partially painted walls (see Nerea, etc) with "With It" Ness. SynchroniCITY itself, then. Vivacity. All this is, from another angle, beer-hall chic, but far from what we see in Maleh's more laid-back Chimsoro. Beer-hall chic is big and bigger farther south in South Africa, let's not forget. But none of this is to deter anyone.
The audio? The lyrics are fine. The acoustics are refined. The singers could do with gentle voice training. The voice is a great instrument, whose full range must be employed for max effect. So it must be trained, and tailored to specific contexts. All grit in the delivery must go.
The instruments are fairly well-played, but, it would appear, rather reluctantly -- as an afterthought. I wonder what this oversight is all about.
The video is directed by Nigeria's Clarence Peters, and Awilo Longomba co-wrote the song, according to the video's credits. That's a big, big deal. The song is not a clone of Longomba's known style of singing or dancing, which is a good thing too. The whole production is a pointer to what the future of Kenya's pop music can be like, with imaginative pooling of creative, directorial and material resources. Nigeria is a great role model in this kind of thing, already.
Pity that Shake Yo Bam Bam ends so, and too, soon, at only 3:24 minutes of play. This denies all of us all of 38 seconds (or so) of fun.
