Kahiga’s long wait for recognition

Sam Kahiga must go on record as one of the most versatile and prolific artistes of post-independent Kenya.

His place in the gallery of East African fiction has been fairly secure. Some of his books — Dedan Kimathi, the Real Story; The Girl From Abroad and Potent Ash, a collection of short stories he co-published with his brother, the late Leonard Kibera — invariably find mention in a variety of university courses on East African literature.

What remains to be acknowledged, however, is the place of Sam Kahiga in the galaxy of Kenyan popular music. Likewise, his pioneering contributions to our film industry, his genius as a designer, a cartoonist and a painter remain largely unknown by the younger generation of Kenyans. But, for now, let us shelve Sam’s exploits in fiction, film and visual art.

This article is dedicated to Sam Kahiga’s musical genius. But it should also serve as a red flag to the current celebs of the Kenyan music industry — those whose ubiquitous faces and voices are so dominant in our living rooms that they can not imagine a time when the only thing anyone in this country will remember about them is the vague echo of a tune and the lyrics of a chorus.

By its very nature, popular music is transient. Whether as social commentary or as political protest, popular music responds to issues of the moment, appearing in bright and bubbly flashes and disappearing just as fast.

It is an art form that exploits topical trends and also fashions new fads. It spreads new technologies, lends us a new grammar with which to explain our experiences and documents a varied cast of significant personalities — politicians, bar-maids, village beauties, local heroes and bashful lovers.

After a few months on the dance floor and the airwaves, most songs literally evaporate from the public sphere. A few lucky ones return a decade or so later in the Sunday afternoon zilizopendwa repertoire at popular nyama choma joints.

A key catalyst in the evaporation of popular songs is technology itself and the alarming speed with which it changes. Today, digital music formats appear so secure and so permanent.

But as surely as the vinyl record gave way to cassettes and cassettes yielded to compact discs, mp3 files and other download systems will become archaic and inaccessible formats whose playback equipment will be as rare as the turn-table and juke box of the 1960s are today.

Anyone who thinks this kind of leap in reality is impossible should ask the upwardly mobile working classes of 1974 whether they ever imagined that Sam Kahiga’s massive chart stopper Sugar Mami would fall off the airwaves, the shop shelves, the dance floor and fade from their personal memories.

In 1974, Sam Kahiga was a producer with the Documentary Film Unit of the Voice of Kenya. He wrote many film scripts and produced amazing stories including one on Nairobi’s City Council schools that is still available at the Kenya Institute of Mass Communications (KIMC).

A 1970 graduate of the University of Nairobi’s Faculty of Architecture, Design and Development, Sam was always torn between a career in either writing or music. Born in August 1946, Sam came of age in the dying days of the colony — a time of violent strife, socio-cultural upheaval and the checkered opportunities that came with Christianity and Western education.

At school, where the colonial philosophy of education seemed to emphasise learning as a painful processes that needed to be accompanied by regular whipping of the buttocks, Sam found quiet solace in music. His first encounter with recorded music happened when he was four years old:

“My father came in one night with a small black gadget with earphones on it and asked us all to take turns listening. This was a crystal-set radio and, for the first time in my life I listened to recorded music”.

Radio aside, Sam grew up with sounds of Kikuyu religious music, the occasional sounds of traditional dancers with rhythmic rattles tied to their feet and colonial martial music carried over from Britain’s exploits in the two world wars. That martial music made every child in Sam’s Kabete village want to make a trumpet and set up a band.

A visit to an aunt in her mud-hut at Ofafa Kunguni in Nairobi introduced Sam to the gramophone, popularly known as His Master’s Voice. He recalls those moments with poignant nostalgia.

He is even more effusive when he starts to talk about his first encounter with the acoustic guitar some time in 1955: “The guitar had only one string, a thin string that made an exciting twang. It was very exciting to finger that sole string and hear the tones change.”

At Thika High School, Sam finally saw a “good guitar” and two school pianos. By the time he was in Form 3, he was the choir-master of his house. Along with Kenneth Watene – who would later become a playwright – Sam quickly learnt how to play musical instruments and to read sheet music. In no time, they had composed close to 200 songs and piano pieces. The recording studio was beckoning.

“While in Form 3, I had my first radio show, directed by Daniel Katuga, a former musician now (working as a VoK) radio producer. I still have a chit that informs someone in the accounts department to ‘Pay Sammy Kahiga Sh40 as I think he deserves it’, instead of the usual Sh30.”

Sam also wrote fiction incessantly, completely undistracted by the pressures of passing school examinations. In 1964, The Kenya Weekly News published his short story, The Last Breath. In all, they published four of his short stories, earning him “the princely sum of Sh80”, an intoxicating sum for a high school boy.

Unlike Edward Masengo, Daudi Kabaka, Fadhili Williams, Fundi Konde, George Mukabi and David Amunga – the leading guitar musicians of the time — Sam sang in English rather than in Kiswahili. But like all these artists, he sang about shy girls and puppy love.

His 1965 duet with Ken Watene, In the Park, was probably Kenya’s first recorded all-English song. It was recorded by the famous Charles Worrod at his Equator Sounds on the then Victoria Street, later renamed Tom Mboya Street. Sam and Ken could not believe it when Worrod paid them a paltry Sh75.

“Worrod… explained that he paid 10 cents per record. Ten cents! We saw darkness. Ken ordered him to erase a second disk he had recorded from us and that ended our relationship.”

The singers knew that In the Park sold well. They even suspected that some copies could have been pirated. But they had no way of keeping tabs on the traffic out of the vinyl pressing plant. They argued that the only way to control this situation was to launch their own record label.

So Sam reorganised his group. Their name changed from The Twilighters to The Cousins. The new group sometimes included Sam’s good friend, David Maillu, the well-known writer.

But at the core of it were Ken Watene, Patrick Kanyue, an architect, Wairimu Chege and two other singers. Sam also formed a record company known as “Sugar”. These realignments took some time and it was not until 1972 that the group released Nyama ya Matumbo which proved very popular.

But it was Sugar Mami that became the most captivating of Sam’s compositions, attracting the attention of VoK censors within two weeks of its release in July 1974. It had been briefly banned from the airwaves not because of any lewd content, but because it mentioned several of Nairobi’s popular entertainment spots. That was regarded as indirect advertisement.

Its catchy rhythms and sweet harmonies aside, Sugar Mami provides bruising social commentary. It confronts a subject that Hollywood has since popularised as “Cougar Town” — the phenomenon of old well-off women who seduce younger men. In August 1974, Sam told the Daily Nation that he had decided to tackle this subject because “so much criticism has been levelled at the sugar daddies that people tend to forget that sugar mummies also exist. I felt that its high time they were exposed as many of them are corrupting our youth.”

Sang from the point of view of the captive young man and his interrogator, Sugar Mami takes on a question and answer format in which the older woman is mocked for her futile attempts at discretion:

“There’s a woman a very rich woman with many, many flats./ Many what? Flats!/ She has no Christian name we call her Sugar Mummy./ Sugar what? Mummy!/ Every Sunday Sugar Mummy she come to take me away./ Really she does? What a shame!/ Sugar Mummy has a lot of money;/ Sugar Mummy is as sweet as honey./ Sugar Mummy though I need your money,/ Sugar Mummy don’t you think it’s funny/ To be seen with you kule Mombasa/ Kule Rongai, Zambezi, 680, kule Pan Africa…”

There have been many “cougar town” songs since Sugar Mami. Arguably, Sammy Muraya’s Mama Kiwinya is the most famous of them. It was liberally used in social media to ridicule the late Wambui Otieno when she married Peter Mbugua. These songs grip our attention because they dare to publicise material threats to traditional masculinity.

Sam Kahiga has recently reconstituted a small band with which he will return to the studios next month to re-record Sugar Mami and other golden oldies. If you still have that vinyl copy of the 1974 Sugar Mami please contact Sam because he is unable to find a copy of it anywhere, remarking in a wistful tone: “I could never keep those copies, they just flew out of my hands, many disappearing mysteriously, rather like the books I have written.”

Indeed, one of the key reasons why Kenyan popular music is so short-lived is our appalling practice of neglecting private and public memory alike. We rarely write, we seldom reprint; we barely catalogue and we archive, preserve and maintain with chronic lethargy and reluctance! Consequently, our documentation in virtually every institution, private or public, is filled with discouraging gaps and yawning absences.

Examples from recent history abound. Nameless — another architect-cum-musician — reportedly lost the master copy of his 2002 hit song, Megarider.

The computer on which it was recorded crashed. Today, Gidi Gidi and Maji Maji are hard pressed to find copies of the T-shirts and caps that spun off Nairobi’s printing presses when the then leading opposition party, NARC, endorsed their protest anthem,  Unbwogable, thereby catapulting it from the realms of popular song to the status of a popular culture event.
Our fragile national memory sorely tempts one to affirm the cynical view of a former US Ambassador to Kenya, Smith Hempstone, as he observed a golf course that had reverted into pasture for goats: “Africa has a way of reclaiming its own”. What appears so permanent today can disappear completely or gradually fade away.

By contrast, at 67 years, Sam’s creative energy still burns bright and steady. Music rehearsals and re-recording aside, he is currently helping a friend finish a feature film. And his fiction is flourishing. Longhorn will soon release his new novel, Kidnap Hill, and he has five other completed manuscripts awaiting the publisher’s nod.

Surely, if Kenya ever builds a Hall of Fame in honour of its creative geniuses, let Sam Kahiga’s name be inscribed there in bold and brightly lit capital letters!

Dr. Nyairo is a cultural analyst. [email protected]