Ethnicity and the brokerage of Kenyan popular music: categorizing ‘Riziki’ by Ja-Mnazi Afrika

Abstract

This article extends the description of the popular music industries as sites in which ethnic identities were constructed and consolidated in early twenty-first century Kenya. The interest is in the brokerage of the music. The focus is on the categorization of the song ‘Riziki’ by the Kenyan popular music band Ja-Mnazi Afrika. ‘Riziki’ was first recorded in 2005 and continued to be a ‘hit’ through 2008. Over year 2008, a number of institutions that were engaged in popular music brokerage variously classified ‘Riziki’ as a western benga song, a Luo song, a Zilizopendwa (Golden Oldies) song, a rumba song, etc. On his part, the song's composer, Awillo Mike, described ‘Riziki’ as a rumba with a muffled zouk beat. The paper argues that the differing categorizations of ‘Riziki’ by brokers arose as a result of the factoring in of ethnicity as an element in the identification of the group in which to place the song, and that such ethnicity-sensitive classifications in turn served to (re)produce and/or normalize ethnic perceptions – and, by extension, helped to construct and consolidate ethnic identities – in early twenty-first century Kenya.

Keywords:

• ‘Riziki’
• Ja-Mnazi Afrika
• popular music brokerage
• categorization of popular music
• ethnic identities
• post-colonial Kenya

Notes

1 The term plural ‘industries’ is used in the paper on the grounds of the correct observation by John Williamson and Martin Cloonan that there are ‘a range of industries centred around music’ (2007, 320) – including recording, business, management, promotion and the singular term ‘industry’ does not do justice to the fact.

2 Most of the information about the composition of ‘Riziki’ and Awillo Mike's explanations of the issues around the song was obtained from two lengthy interviews I had with him. The first was on 2 December 2008 (Awillo Mike, personal communication, 2 December 2008) and the second, a year later, on 16 December 2009 (Awillo Mike, personal communication, 16 December 2009).

3 Indeed, in the 2003 Kisima Awards there was a category of Central Benga that catered only for Kikuyu-language benga. The category was discontinued after that year.

4 In 2009, Awillo Mike started categorizing his music as Rumba-benga, dipping into this now accepted definition of Kenyan guitar music forms as benga.

5 Awillo Mike has since composed one song in DhoLuo: ‘Achi (Mbuta de Mbuta)’. He has also composed a second song, ‘Rhumba ya Boaz’ that has a DhoLuo second section. These songs are in the album Shamba la Mawe that is due for release in March 2015.

6 Interestingly, Kenyan commentators of Kenyan popular music generally hesitate to categorize as benga those songs whose lyrics are in KiSwahili. They often revert to ‘Zilizopendwa’. See, for example, Okumu (1998).

7 Lingala is the general term under which guitar-based Congolese popular music is known, after the language in which most of it is sung.