Few years ago,I lived next door to a budding artist.I used to spend most of my free time at his house which also doubled up as a studio.I marveled at his array of equipments which actually was a MacBook,iMac,mixer,Mic and several speakers.I come from an era where a studio was a whole roomful of equipment and DJs had mtu wa mkono to help rewind cassette tapes with bic biros.
I wrote a few rhymes and by few clicks on his laptop keyboard he made me some beats ."shingo upande umeiva,hii hapa ni hit mtu wangu"hii itakuwa fresh hits kiss fm mwaka mzima"he said.his other friends showered my recoding with even more praises,hii hit ikifika stato man ita pata 5 mics kwa the source magazine,hii shit ni dope ma nigger.
I pictured my self on stage,shirtless,durag kichwani,mic mkononi ,baggy Jeans with girls finding me too hot that they had to throw their panties on stage to cool me down.
He arranged for me a gig in one of the clubs he frequented.Actually I was just to curtain raise for another artist who inturn curtain raised for another artist.
I dashed on stage jumping and wildly waving my hands.I wore my my oversize white tshirt,white sneaker and my oversize fubu three quarter trouser.I grabbed my crouch and said singingfully “yo yo yo yo yo”
The lyrics disappeared.the crowd was getting agitated.I tried dancing to the dj scratches and it didn’t help the situation either.finally some feed up reveler walked up stage and punched me off stage.
I now know who to blame for ruining my musical career.my DAD.
my dad was the C.A.K of our house.he controlled the air wave and changing the station or listening to genre of music he disapprove would result in some serious canning.
My dad always listened to Congolese music.he has a huge collection of them and I think over exposure to that kind of music partly is to blame for ruining my dancing ability as well.I know as a luo that gyrating of waist is our geneticaly preset dancing style but mine is worse.if i find some music interesting and " big tune"I always end up deploying my gyrating waist dance style to it whether it’s a dirge,national anthem, or church hymn.
Our radio back was only tuned to either kbc kiswahili or bbc.when he was away, I would secretly tune to kbc English to listen to John karani’s show and nzau kalulu’s sundowner show.only two FM stations existed,capital and metro.capital was not suitable for osungu challenged individual s.the presenters spoke impeccable osungu laced with some western hemisphere accent.they even played more confusing music-rock music!
Metro fm was more appealing,my favorite was the after noon show with dan oloo.they played hiphop. …my dad meanness with his radio lead to my lack of expose musically which inturn ruined my promising career as a internationally acclaimed award winning musician that ever walked this earth.