Adawnage: It’s a new dawn
Roselyn Mwihaki, Lorna Olwanda, Wanjiku Mirithu, Frank Muriuki, Robert Njuguna, Anthony Iganza, Julius Nyawara, David Ogara, Dominic Khaemba and Noah Ochieng.
What does the name Adawnage mean?
We decided to craft a word from the phrase ‘a new dawn for our age’. Starting everything a fresh and taking it to new heights.
It is a band made up of ten talented people with the same vision. We are Roselyn Mwihaki, Lorna Olwanda, Wanjiku Mirithu, Frank Muriuki, Robert Njuguna, Anthony Iganza, Julius Nyawara, David Ogara, Dominic Khaemba and Noah Ochieng.
A band of 10 is rather large, don’t you think so?
No, in fact, we were 13 when we started, but three dropped along the way.
What’s the advantage of such a big band?
It helps when we have to multi-task. We have six vocalists, so we can split and attend two gigs at the same time and still manage to give the best shows.
But that is only when we must do so. At the moment, we are doing our best to make sure we are together in all the gigs.
How long has it taken you guys to be where you are right now?
About three years of hard work and dedication.
That’s a short time for a band to hit the way you have.
Yes and no. It might look like a very short time but the challenges we have faced along the way makes it look like forever.
What challenges are you talking about?
In our first year in music, we took a full year to record one song with some Nairobi-based producer, and we still didn’t like the song.
We were so frustrated, so we had to change studios and head to Nyeri where we recorded the full album.
How many videos have you done so far?
We launched our first video ‘Uwezo’ in April, and we are planning to launch ‘Safari’ in the next few weeks. We had done another video about a year ago but we never launched it.
Why?
Well, there’s this friend from Germany who volunteered to shoot the video for free, but when he sent it back after editing, we couldn’t even show it to every member of the group! It was that bad.
What’s your performance programme like?
We are currently fully booked up to end of August. In September, we will be heading to Ethiopia to perform and later on to Canada, which is not confirmed yet.
Ok, so all of you come from the same church?
Not at all. We are all from different churches, we know it’s very interesting but what is important is that we all have a common vision.
Then how did you come together?
A couple of years ago, one vocalist was performing at a Talentmania event. After being backed up so well by the instrumentalists, an idea of a band was born.
The good thing is that we all knew each other since childhood, since we all grew up in the Eastlands area.
Are you making enough money as a band?
Well, right now things are looking up, people are showing more interest and appreciation comes in many ways. We are able to settle a lot of things that require finances, so we are doing fine.
When you started off, how was payment like?
Our first gig — we don’t want to say where — we were paid Sh300 each! It was so funny we spent the money at the event, but all the same excited that our music was paying.
What’s the biggest challenge you have faced as a band?
For the longest time, financial management has been a challenge, especially when we were recording the album. But now the biggest challenge is finding time to rehearse, since we do it only over the weekends.
All members of the band are professionals in different organisations.
So who runs the band?
We all have different responsibilities. There’s somebody who deals with instruments, others in marketing the music, others in making sure that our performance calendar is intact and so on and so forth.
You have your own band equipment?
Oh yes, and funny thing is that we have never used money from our pockets to purchase the equipment.
Most of it has been donated by well wishers everywhere we go to perform, and now we have a full band set plus sound.
What keeps you together?
Other than the passion we all have for music, we all share the same vision. We are all strong believers in the word of God and we all pray to remain strong together and achieve everything that we have planned to do.
Other than music, is there anything the band plans to do?
For us, this is not just music but ministry. We plan to establish a ministry that will still work even when we can’t sing any more.
We want to reach out to the people and empower them to use their talents.
