Heartbreaks, histories and character development: The enduring music of Sauti Sol

The popular music group Sauti Sol, formed in 2005, has straddled the Kenyan pop culture scene for almost two decades now. In the years they have been active, Sauti Sol, based chiefly in the city of Nairobi, have composed and performed chronicles that narrate the city, giving clues and discourses that have not only captured the transmogrification of the city, but also the cultural ebb and flow of Nairobi, and in many ways, the cultural ebb and flow of the country.

It seems only yesterday that Sauti Sol first burst onto the unsuspecting Kenyan popular music scene with the hit ‘Lazizi’, whose opening guitar sequence felt reminiscent of Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat.

However, this guitar sequence was accompanied by vocals that were distinctly Kenyan and very relatable. With Kiswahili lyrics and the second verse sung in KiLuhya, the song immediately stamped its authority on the Kenyan music scene.

These were the days when budding relationships were nurtured at the Java fast-food outlet, and these lyrics making reference to this Kenyan tradition slid Sauti Sol into the hearts of Kenyan music fans. Members of the band — Bien-Aimé Baraza, Willis Chimano, Savara Mudigi and guitarist Polycarp Otieno — would go on to become household names.

Over the years, Sauti Sol grew from a fledgling boy-band into a formidable cultural force.

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‘Lazizi’, which appeared in their 2008 studio album Mwanzo (‘Beginning’ in Kiswahili), was followed by their sophomore album, 2011’s Sol Filosofia, 2015’s Live and Die in Afrika, 2019’s Afrikan Sauce, and their most recent, 2020’s Midnight Train.

The band recently revealed a plan to take a break from performing together to concentrate on individual projects, marking a pause, or as some would argue, an end, to almost two decades of music-making and cultural mediation not just in Kenya, but across the continent.

The questions we ask as students of culture and music is what legacies they leave with us at this reflective point in their career.

First, I would argue that the composition of their music and constructions of their albums over the years reflect the ways in which Sauti Sol, like the cityscape, continue to gain individual ‘aura’.

Scholar Achille Mbembe has argued that the African City begins as mimicry of a European City, and elsewhere that is here, and over time, and through the process of what he terms as mimesis, the city gains its own aura.

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Sauti Sol can be seen in a similar light, having begun as mimetic of other existing musicians that have influenced their music, and then through mimesis, growing into the Sauti Sol that is now taking an active break from performing as a band.

In that intervening almost 20-year period, Sauti Sol have grown and transmogrified similar as the city in which they have been based — Nairobi. Through their musical trajectories, we see what both Mbembe and scholar Sarah Nuttal have jointly termed ‘traumatic amnesia and, in some cases, nostalgia or even mourning’ present in the post-colonial city’s tensions. 

In Sauti Sol’s music, the materialisms, and cosmopolitanisms of Nairobi are discoursed, and a socio-political and cultural picture of the city as a post-colonial and perhaps, even neo-colonial cityscape emerges, and is at once embraced, as well as problematised.

Most visibly, it is the interpersonal relationships between men and women that have created the most discourse across their albums, reflecting the tensions, nostalgia and mourning with which relationships are approached, and through which they are performed.

2018’s ‘Lazizi’ was a shy young man asking a girl out on a date at Java, and declaring his jealousy on seeing her with other men, while ‘Nairobi’ in the same album is an ode to the city in which this young man and this potential date, the Miss Congeniality in the song, play out their relationship drama. ‘Nairobi’ can almost be juxtaposed with ‘Lazizi’ – the authors of the song engaged in a complex relationship with both, both of whom are filled with nuanced layers that are both ‘poa sana’ and ‘solar sana’ – the good, and the harsh.

We see this in the sophomore album, 2011’s Sol Filosofia, which starts off with the sentimental love song ‘Malikia’, which has the lines ‘Malikia nakuita uje unizalie’ {Malikia, come have my baby}, and then segues immediately into the tragic ‘Coming Home’, where we see a broken relationship centred around a pregnant girlfriend who grows tired of waiting for a lover (played by a Sauti Sol member) who has stayed too long on the album tour, and she decides to settle with another man and have his baby. The lover returns and heartbroken, attempts to take his life.

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This quick escalation is reminiscent of the cityscape itself, where Kenyans now claim things happen at the speed of “wuehs!”.

The city becomes the site of such kinds of quick heartbreak, of ‘character development’, where there appears to be little patience, and those that toe the straight line get broken.

‘Awinja’ in the same album continues with the narrative, where the titular Awinja appears to be a missing mum, and in the song, Sauti Sol are appealing to her to come back because even ‘the children are asking’ where she went.

By their third album, the 2015 Live and Die in Afrika, a more confident and successful Sauti Sol present a more bullish discourse, which is still anchored in the cityscape. Their appreciation for the home-grown peppers the entire album, and can be juxtaposed onto their narratives around relationships.

This is the album that brings us ‘Nerea’ for example, where they address the titular Nerea as a man, urging her not to abort his baby because he can take care of it. This song epitomises the complexities that both the Afrika they sing about, and the relationships that colour it, embody.

It is not the norm (or simple) for men to take care of children, so urging Nerea to keep a baby she does not want on this thin promise poses serious questions, especially when that promise is bracketed by the phrase ‘mtoto anakuja na sahani yake’ to mean every child comes with their own modes of sustenance, something we all know is untrue.

We live in a country where men periodically abandon their children and leave the mothers to struggle financially in bringing them up. ‘Nerea’, therefore, becomes a site in which we examine this societal phenomenon, and examine the solutions being posed here, especially where in the previous ‘Awinja’, the male protagonist is struggling to care for his children and is begging the mother to come back.

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We see this in ‘Isabella’ and ‘KissMe’, where a mixture of fantastic dreams and promises are centred on living in the now, because a tomorrow is not certain. It appears that Sauti Sol are juxtaposing their vision of an ‘Afrika’ where they wish to be rich, where they wish to live and die, and which is also comparable to the precarity of life and relationships – nothing is certain or promised.

Their ‘Kuliko Jana’ in the same album is a foray into the religious, a core feature of life and culture across the continent. Even now, we see political regimes established on the tenets of the religious. Sauti Sol do not problematise this – no – they feature these cultural commas of the continent in their music, leaving us to do the musing. The religious as politics, as refuge, as music, as culture and as problem, is captured in a small snippet in this song, and then not addressed further. This is also perhaps because Sauti Sol are not billing themselves as a religious band, and yet, not distancing themselves from the religious either, straddling a narrowing divide in music between the two.

In 2019’s Afrikan Sauce, Sauti Sol have fully come into their own. The album is full of cross-continental collaborations with artistes that include Patoranking, Yemi Alade, Tiwa Savage, and Burna Boy. This is the album that brings us the moisture-filled ‘Melanin’, the afro-beat-filled ‘Love on the Dance Floor’, the bongo-flava-tinged ‘Kamasutra’, the punchy guitar of ‘African Star’ that features the unmistakable vocals of Burna, the gritty urban-pop of ‘Rewind’ that brings in Khaligraph Jones’ talent, and the slightly anti-political machinery of ‘Tujiangalie’ that features the effortless delivery of Nyashinki –  this latter offering a problematic, whitewashed version of the politics of Kenya that places blame on a voter without extending it to the political system that fosters the challenges they point out in the song.

This is the one failure, as it were, of this particular ballad – there is no deeper introspection on the state of the political structures in the country, rather, a quick finger that points at one party (reminiscent of King Kaka’s ‘Wajinga Nyinyi’) and erases the concerted organising from below that continually speaks back to power.

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 Nevertheless, this is the album that also gives us the offering that is ‘Short and Sweet’, a popular ballad that demonstrates the grown vocals of Sauti Sol, and segues back to the city of Nairobi, and its one original iconic feature that is a thread across all of the band’s albums, including the most recent 2020’s Midnight Train: the railway.

The railway and trains are symbolisms that have peppered the music of Sauti Sol right from Mwanzo, whose album art featured the band standing in a line at a railway line. ‘Short and Sweet’ in Afrikan Sauce is filmed at the Railway Museum in Nairobi, while the Midnight Train album art features the band standing on a train engine in the moonlight. The themes of trains and railways stations that have featured in the band’s music over the years are iconic for several reasons.

George Whitehouse

First, in considering Nairobi as a colonial store depot established at the tail end of 1899 by George Whitehouse, the chief engineer of the Mombasa-Uganda railway, in Mbembe’s words, as a mimicry of the city of London.

That Nairobi grew from this old colonial railway, and in many ways is also currently coloured by a newer standard gauge railway line built by former President Uhuru Kenyatta, presents certain clear ironies.

The city and the railway appear to be intertwined, its identity as a city where people appear to not belong, but to pass through from somewhere to somewhere else becomes a theme in Sauti Sol music, mirroring the transient and evanescent nature of lives in the city scape.

Nairobi is still a colonial city, one where colonial structures of the early 1990s still exist, where the political and financial elite ensconce themselves in leafy suburbia away from the poor natives who are the majority. A 2020 Just City study shows that 70 per cent of Nairobi residents are squeezed into just five per cent of its total residential areas, while the remaining 30 per cent occupy the remaining 95 per cent of residential areas.

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This huge wealth disparity that forces the majority into cramped living quarters cannot be ignored as part of Nairobi’s colonial past and present – in colonial Nairobi, majority of the natives were confined to the city’s Eastlands, while the minority white and Asian residents occupied the rest of the city. A hostile place for the native with constant harassment and forced use of kipande, Nairobi for the native is not ‘home’, rather, a place where one comes to eke out a living while planning on settling down back home in the later years of retirement.

The train and railway, therefore, become signals of these ephemeralities – we are all on our way from somewhere to somewhere else. And sometimes, that somewhere is uncertain, unclear, especially for those that call Nairobi ‘home’, and may not necessarily have somewhere to run to, to escape the harshness that is evident in both the city and in Sauti Sol’s music.

For these, and many others, to ‘live and die in Afrika’ becomes a double-edged sword because the railway or train as a symbol of coming and going somewhere else where things may be better, is absent.

This means their means of escape is non-existent, and they become trapped in a place where life is difficult and like in ‘Coming Home’, ‘home’ is nothing but heartbreak and a bleak future. The suicide ideation and action present in the irony of ‘Coming Home’ is a harsh reality for many Kenyans at present – home is not, in essence, home at all. There is no home to come to, and these individuals become unmoored from themselves and their various identities.

But all is not bleak. Midnight Train offers an intro that urges listeners to ‘do what makes you happy… raha usijinyime’. The titular ‘Midnight Train’ is a testament to this ‘journey’ that is signified by the lyrics ‘it's unbelievable that we made it this far … to see the Promised Land from afar, so beautiful’. The train ‘to Zion’, a promised utopian metaphor.

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The other songs in the album are mellower, such as ‘Insecure’, or ‘Brighter Days’, performed alongside the Soweto Gospel Choir. The rhumba-laden ‘Suzanna’ is a modern masterpiece that shows how Sauti Sol have, in the breadth of their musical career, paid homage to other African artistes and genres. Throughout their music, they pay homage to Ukoo Flani Mau Mau, Oliver Mtukudzi and Daudi Kabaka, among other musicians of note, many of whom have died.

Sauti Sol have also expanded the rather closeted cultural discourse around masculinity in Kenya. Periodically spotting bright and multi-coloured clothing in their album art, music videos, and live performances, they were often-time accused of ‘being gay’ in a country where these words are problematically wielded as insults and threats.

Public scripts

In doing this, they have continued to contribute to the creation and recreation of what Kenyan scholar Dinah Ligaga has referred to a ‘public scripts’, which are ways of behaviour that are prescribed for certain marginalised segments of the population to control their behaviour and being. This typically includes women, girls, and those that identify as gender non-binary.

As both a public, as well as a member of a wider public, Sauti Sol have, through their music, used their platform to negotiate, (re)write and curate narratives and scripts of the city, and by extension, the nation. They have in no way done this perfectly – and in some instances, they have both performed harmful and wholesome narratives either deliberately, or unwittingly.

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Some of these judgments can only be made in the long-term. What is clear is the ways in which Sauti Sol have towered over the musical and cultural landscapes of the country, and indeed, the continent, over the past two decades, and this extends to dance as well.

They have been embroiled in egoistic and problematic occurrences, accused of cancelling shows on whims, and of allowing fame to cloud judgment. They have also constructed Sol Generation from the ground up, a legacy project that combines a recording label as well as a nurturing space for younger musicians looking to follow the success of the Sauti Sol railway line that began with ‘Lazizi’, and leads to ‘Midnight Train’, perhaps on a faster train.

It is unclear if Sauti Sol will reunite for another studio album run similar to what they have done over the past two decades. What is clear is the wide array of music they have thus far offered us, through which we can read the cityscape, and its various cultural languages and vocabularies, and thus track the growth and trajectory of both – the city, and its cultures.

Dr Mose is a researcher, writer and lecturer.