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For many years now, the Kenyan coastal music scene has not lived to it’s full potential. Some industry critics even liken it to a dead coral reef. Dormant. This is despite the Coast being the source and inspiration of fo the country’s music since the 1960s. Just like in Tanzania, the coastal hits have always been the soft and smooth slow jams that soothe the heart and take away our every sorrow.

Since the 60s, the region has produced artistes whose songs have gone ahead to rule the airwaves even when they stopped being actively involved with music matters. Some of the pioneering musicians include bango maestro Mzee Ngala, jazz icon Abdulaziz, Stella hitmaker Freshley Mwamburi, Maroon Commandoes founding member Abel Kifoto, first taarab singer Asha Suleiman (of the smash hit Vidonge), just to mention a few.

In the 1970s, Mombasa gave birth to Them Mushrooms who ended up being among Kenya’s first musical export. Later, Ally B, Nyota Ndogo and Prince Adios keenly followed in the footsteps of their predecessors, and went ahead to find commercial success after managing to get the mainstream urban audience.

Years later, the region continues to produce some of the best musicians in the country among them Otile Brown, Masauti, and Jovial. But like Fundi Frank, rapper Poxi Presha and street emcee Buda Boaz, circumstances forced this young crop of musicians to move to Nairobi before their popularity would be felt nationwide, as the notion of coastal music being confined to the region thrived.

Suitable infrastructure

Music producer Anthony Nyando aka MC Tee says Nairobi has major resources suitable to make a struggling artiste become an instant celebrity. He says the capital city has the best and well-equipped recording studios, which is one of the critical requirements for producing good music.

“Nairobi hosts most of the popular radio and TV stations where the music is played. Artistes from Mombasa lack that guidance of how to reach out to these media stations,” he says, adding that in Nairobi, artistes are bound to fall in the hands of good, skilful, experienced and hardworking management teams that could guide them through their music journey.

He says a good management has the capabilities of elevating an artiste from ground zero to high levels in the shortest time possible, especially when the terms of the contract are favourable. Tee, who has produced music for a number of coastal artistes including Dazlah, maintains that the success of an artiste is a result of an individual’s hard work and consistence. He accuses most of musicians from the Coast of lacking proper vision and strategies to realising their musical dreams.

“Most of them do not dream big enough; they do not picture themselves competing in greater platforms. They are comfortable with the village popularity. They are contented with county level achievements, so they relax,” says Tee, pointing that due to the lack of a vision, most of the artistes do not push themselves hard in producing hit music, as many of them lack the consistency spirit. 

Steven Mwalili, a Coast-based entertainment content producer says that long gone are the days when artistes from outside the Coast region could travel far and wide into Mombasa in pursuit of collaborations with the coastal stars.

“Tanzanian musicians and those from Nairobi, some of whom are now very popular, used to travel all the way to Mombasa to pursue collabos with our artistes. Does that happen anymore? I don’t think so,” he notes.

Changing dynamics

He opines that the rains started beating the coastal music, when the artistes could not keep up with the changing musical dynamics such as music styles, and audience platforms.

Mwalili says some artistes who put in place a good professional management team to take charge of their activities and turn their music into proper money making businesses, and those who employed music managers or signed with top management labels ended up enjoying those beneficial moves.

However, he adds, it took long before musicians from the Coast region realised the importance of professional music managers, a move that led to some of them relocating to Nairobi in search of the elusive success. Also, the pressure to succeed proved too much to some of the artistes, and with no new tricks, many of them remained a frustrated lot.

“This is when they started trading accusations against each other with some accusing others of using witchcraft in their music craft. But honestly, there is no witchcraft, it is all in their minds,” he notes, saying such accusations thrived because most of the artists are illiterate and could not think beyond their village gossips where successful people are linked to devil worshipping and witchcraft.

He also accuses some of the artiste managers and promoters for recruiting some of the artistes, only for them to end up exploiting them. Mwalili adds that while other artistes from elsewhere in the country were exploring other ways of moving their music to the world and exploring the digital opportunities in platforms such as YouTube and Spotify, their coastal counterparts were still stuck on the old ways of depending on the mainstream media to make their music popular.

This, he says, limited their music to within the coastal strip, and for those who were lucky, got airtime in few national media platforms. All this was happening when music from other parts of the country and foreign nations was taking the centre stage.

“Our own Kenyan music had to fight for airtime with international music thus suffocating mediocre music that lacked content, especially that from the Coast region,” he says, noting that a few musicians learned their lessons and upped their game, but a majority of them were left behind lamenting over being denied airplay on radio and TV stations.

Lack of trusted promoters has also been cited as a contributing factor to the dwindling fortunes among the coastal artistes, as most promoters preferred to fly in artistes to perform in concerts at the Coast. Despite protests from the local artistes, they were still roped-in only to curtain-raise for the other artistes, and most of them were poorly paid or not paid at all. This then led to the notion that artistes would only succeed if they moved to Nairobi.

However, Nyota Ndogo says the music sector faces a myriad of challenges including lack of support from the industry stakeholders including the government. She adds that the biases and challenges are not unique to the Coast but nationwide.

“The government has failed to come up with policies that can protect artistes from exploitation. They (government and politicians) only remember us during campaigning season where we are used in composing colourful campaigning tunes, but dumped immediately when elections are over. If only we had guidelines that forces media houses to play 80 per cent of local music or that ensures local artistes feature prominently during live performance events, then our music would be far,” she tells Spice.

The Nibebe hit singer says favouritism rules the roost when it comes to artistes getting airplay or spaces to perform. 

“Music gigs are set for specific people who are linked or friends to the music promoters while the other artistes are left to suffer in darkness. Many good artistes are underrated while those who lack good content are the most sought after, yet their music cannot last even a year,” she notes.

Old challenges

Nyota says the challenges facing coastal music have existed since time immemorial, only that the artistes had the will to fight for their space and never allowed complaints to take prominence. However, she says the current crop of musicians lack the will to learn and prosper.

“You cannot educate them on anything; most view us like the out-dated artistes who lack the wisdom to educate them and that is how they do not have mentors,” she says, accusing some artistes of leading ‘fake’ lives and exonorating herself by saying she learned to live within her means and working extra hard to afford the life she wants.

“I do not care about who will laugh at me for cooking at my restaurant, but if music is not enough to put food on your table, find a side hustle,” she asserts.

Writer and celebrity blogger OmmyDallah says, “One of the major problem facing the industry is lack of unity among the artistes. They keep on fighting each other and barbing accusations against each other,” he says, adding that many of the musicians have failed to understand that the music industry has evolved.

“The music trends have changed, which demands for the artistes to be open-minded and learn the new dynamics that affect the music business. Music is not just about recording music; it involves various dynamics incorporated together to produce a good artiste with good music. But our musicians are lazy. They do not want to learn from their colleagues and that’s why some of them are moving to Nairobi,” says OmmyDallah.

He adds that petty wrangles between the experienced artistes have denied the up-and-coming artistes the much-needed mentorship. He says there is need for the rising artistes to be guided and educated on quality music writing that can stand the test of time.

He offers in conclusion, “We should teach our up-and-coming artistes that good music sells itself and people will listen to it for years. Also, there’s need to train artistes on emerging music trends, which they can invest in and turn their music and to business.”