Magesha Ngwiri: Church should let ‘Firirinda’ be

Last Sunday, a Presbyterian Church of East Africa cleric expressed great displeasure with a song that has become popular with some members of the Kikuyu community, especially during bride-price ceremonies, weddings, birthday parties and even during political functions.

While banning the song, Firirinda, from any church-related function he would be presiding over in the future, the Mathira spiritual leader described it as ungodly, though he did not say exactly how. In one sense, he was right. Such songs should not really feature at sombre occasions like funerals.

However, in another sense, he was wrong. The song, which has been trending for the better part of this year with its jaunty tune and highly danceable beat, is meant for happy occasions, but describing it as “ungodly” is akin to killing a mosquito with a club.

Indeed, it exemplifies the kind of zealotry that has lost the Christian church’s youthful adherents in droves over the years. The ban also raises other issues to do with culture and religion, for we seem to have swallowed too many myths shovelled down our throats by foreigners to the effect that Africans were godless savages until the white man came on a mission of redemption.

First, a brief history of the song: It was originally recorded in 1986 by Gatundu musician Dick (Munyonyi) Njoroge, but it did not attract fans until this year when a popular vernacular radio and television DJ, Jeff Kuria, gave it air-play and it started trending on social media.

Perfectly harmless ditty

It is a simple song with catchy lyrics and elementary dance-steps without any hint of lewdness. In fact, it is meant to be a welcoming song for guests at public functions, be they traditional or “modern”, and nothing in it should really arouse the ire of clerics except one line that prescribes a sugarless mug of tea for those guests who don’t take alcohol.

My only quarrel with the clergyman is that he has taken the issue too seriously. For a man who presumably administers tiny doses of alcohol to his flock during Holy Communion, such intolerance is staggering, if you pardon the pun.

No dance is likely to make the women whirling their skirts any less godly, or any born-again Christian backslide. It is a perfectly harmless ditty that has probably earned its composer a few coins in his waning years and nothing more. Nowhere in the Bible are Christians cajoled to be dour misanthropes with nary a funny bone in their make-up.

The ridiculous reaction to the song may not be the best example of how practitioners of the Christian religion have looked down upon African traditions through the ages, insisting that the only way to become a true Christian is to discard every one of them, but it comes close.

We were taught from our youth that everything with an African origin is heathen, and the only route to redemption is to adopt the mannerisms, languages and even names of the white man. We were told that traditional brews were the favourite tipples of the devil, and we should replace them with whisky, scotch, rum, gin and other concoctions that have ruined the livers of insufferable snobs.

During baptism, we were forced to adopt ridiculous names which have no meaning to us if we wanted to be accepted as “civilised”. The trouble is, some of our clerics still think there is something wrong if you insist on adopting an African name like Kwame, Haile or Samora.

Dwelling on non-issues

We were also taught that the mark of an educated person is how he or she has mastered the English language. In short, we were socialised to believe that everything African is wrong and everything foreign superior. When Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o titled his book of essays Decolonising the Mind, he must have had such things in mind – that we Africans are still lost in a cultural maze and in danger of losing our identities.

It is a big pity that to this day, some people with a highly infectious inferiority complex hold on to such beliefs, indicating just how thoroughly they have been indoctrinated to hate everything African and to adore everything foreign. Is it any wonder that to this day, Africans are being used by wazungu to harass, oppress and plunder from fellow Africans while still professing the Christian faith? 

Doesn’t it worry anyone that Africans are perhaps the only people whose governments condone the enslavement and casual murders of their women in faraway lands?

Instead of dwelling on non-issues like the innocent lyrics to songs meant to welcome honoured guests to social functions, perhaps our religious leaders should concentrate more on denouncing the iniquities of a socio-political system, which has managed to condemn millions to endemic deprivation.

Promising them heaven in the hereafter when they have always lived in acute destitution here on earth just won’t do. Not when they know that those who have made them live in this misery are their own political leaders – and the apologists their own clergymen.

Mr Ngwiri is a consultant editor; [email protected]