Nairobi’s Emerging Electronic Music
While sourcing inspiration for Elzada, my radar is constantly ticking towards electronic music scenes that bring forward their deeper cultural influences. I was in awe when I came across Boiler Room's short feature covering Nairobi's emerging electronic music and arts scene. Admittedly, I was late to the party. But it is still great to see the independent European-American media outlets shining a positive light on Africa's contemporary arts and culture.
If we look at every community across the globe, music is key to it's identity and culture. I'm so happy to see how the East African contemporary arts and music scene is flourishing within it's own ecosystem. However, it was also sad to hear how music and arts is being neglected by the education sector. It's ironic as it's because of their music that I'm even writing this post.
With my Dad being born and raised right there in Nairobi town, I feel a deep connection with what's going on there. My Dad would tell us stories of segregation in Kenya during the 1950's and how the Black Africans were treated as third class citizens in their own land. He said that him and friends who he would play football with, would sneak into the Black African bars to watch bands perform because they were the best musicians - kinda seems like something I would do!
I'm fortunate to have close family members living in East Africa whom I've visited a number of times, being able to see Africa first hand. But it's insane how backward people's perception of Africa still is. Many people think it's literally all elephants and mud huts. It obviously isn't, but how else do we expect people to visualise it when that's the only narrative that mainstream media feeds it.
But yeah nuff ranting, check out the videos below: