Culture of Kenya

Music

With the Kenya, the Contemporary art in is still with its stammerings. The artistic form more the appraisal is certainly the Musique. As everywhere in Africa, the traditional Music rate/rhythm events of the life of the village. Each ethnos group has a particular style. The common point is the use of the percussion S. the drum, or ngoma, gave its name to these musics. Several ethnicities are characterized by their musical provisions: the Luo, the Giriama and the Digo on the coast. The artistic form most traditional is the Sigana, which mixes narration, song, music, dance, rites and masks in a long performance.

The modern music is the meeting of two universes: big lakes and the coast. The known Congolese style under the name of lingala was introduced into the years 1960 by artists like Samba Mapangala. The Kenyan orchestras developed also their own style, with famous the Jambo Bwana, the semi-official Kenyan anthem, written by the accustomed group of the tourist tours: Them Mushrooms . Benga is the music of the most diffused contemporary dance. Its origin is luo, but Kamba also practice it in a sophisticated version. With the progress of the instrumental techniques, the drums became battery and percussions, and the traditional string instruments of the electric guitars. Among the musicians representative of Benga, let us quote Owino Misiani and Uyoga groups it (album Nzele party published in 2002). The music Taarab of the Coast, which had been in the beginning only played at the time of the marriages swahili knows for a few years a resurgence in a “pop” form. The churches, where the choir singing is omnipresent, give rise to vocal groups representative of the various currents like Kayamba Africa. Some result from the popular quarters, like Yunasi with its six singers come from the Bidonville of Mathare Valley. The artists have however sorrow to transform the traditional asset into original modern creations as it was the case in other areas of the continent, with the Senegal or in South Africa for example. Two singers recently left the Kenyan perimeter to acquire an international notoriety: powerful the Achien' G Abura (with the album Spirit off Warrior in 2002 has) and Suzzana Owiyo which began with laments from its native Kisumu. The music scene with Nairobi is vibrating in a variety of clubs where all the styles are found, with today a predilection for the Rap and the Hip hop.

Painting

The galleries are numerous with Nairobi. The first were born in the Années 1960 in the downtown area, close to the hotels, i.e. close to the places of sale, often helped by English foundations. The gallery Paa Ya Paa Arts burned in 1997, losing an important part of its collection. But its owner, did not lose hope for as much and it created a new space where poets, painters and musicians meet. The other historical gallery is Watatu with the downtown area. Animated by Ruth Shaffner, it was the cradle of the contemporary art in Kenya. The gallery emphasized works of often self-educated artists, with the style narrative and painting with large features of the very coloured bucolic scenes or leaving free course to oneiric sequences. Other galleries took over like Nairobi Museum, the Market Village or the French House. Most innovative of the galleries is certainly RaMoMa (Rahimtulla Museum off Modern Art), directed by Carol Lees and whose project is to constitute with patience and method a collection of contemporary works of reference: Painting S, Sculpture S, Drawing S, Textile S…

The artists like to gather in schools or studios to share pictorial inspiration and techniques. Two associations played a very important part. Initially that of Ngecha Artists Association. Ngecha is a borough located at Limuru close to Nairobi. Twenty years ago, all the village painted and was devoted to various forms of artistic expression, of the sculpture to the pottery. Today the workshop is not very active, for lack of means. About fifteen younger artists preferred to gather in Banana Hill Studio, which is also located close to Nairobi. The workshop is animated by Shine Tani, a former child of the street which after having made circus launched out in painting. It organizes training courses and ensures the promotion of the tables of a merry band of painters the relatively homogeneous style. They affectionnent the scenes cocasses of the rural life, as much as the poignant scenes of the contemporary world: Shantytown S, robbers, prostitutes… Among those which passed by the studio, some expose from now on abroad, like Joseph Cartoon, King Dodge, Meek Gichugu… A more recent association, Kuona Trust, settled with the Museum of Nairobi. She plays the chart of the professionalisation of the artists and tries to gather painters resulting from the schools of art or university. About thirty artists assiduously attend the workshop under the direction of Judy Ogana.

Three outstanding figures left Kenyan painting the “afro-Saxon style” in which it took pleasure at the origin to satisfy the tastes of primarily tourist customers and which appreciated the stereotyped visions of Africa. Although it is Ugandan, Jak Katarikawe is regarded as one of the founding fathers of Kenyan painting. Devoted universally for a work started in the years 1970, it was called the “Chagall of central Africa” for its imagination and the freedom which it took with regard to the traditional figuration and its preference for a tender pallet of pink and blue, reproducing rural scenes, cows and birds especially, licked with large features and inspired by the memory of Kiga, its area of origin, close to Lake Victoria. Towards about sixty, it found a form of appeasing. Sane Wadu is the other devoted talent. It sells in the whole world. It developed a style more expressive than strictly descriptive, anchored in the contemporary company of which it criticizes the many mistakes. It paints scenes of city, full with a dense crowd which presses itself, intermingles, is crushed, choked under the weight of the human condition in a space where any reference to the prospect disappeared. The senior of the women painters is Rosemary Karuga. She was likely to off study in School Fine Art of Makerere College, before gaining many prices for a work which evolved/moved of the oil-base paint with joining, when the conventional material price - fabrics, brushes and tubes - became too high for its modest purse. Now, it cuts out paper parts in the reviews and the newspapers to tell in a coloured and expressive way the life of its village and the stories of animals.

Justus Kyalo is the leader of the second generation: large fluid frescos with the strong colors in homage to the woman or drafts of spontaneous dancers in a movement of blue colors. El Taweb Daw El Beat, of Sudanese origin , works with a broad pallet of average techniques to multiply the decorative effects and to evoke the intimacy of the houses. Its inspiration is Nubian, but also Tuareg and Massaï. James Mbuthia tries to leave the hell of naive African in whom his former friends of Banana take pleasure, without to give up the representations that he prefers: women at the market, mothers and children intertwined, children with their familiar animal. Daniel Kinyanjui proposes scenes of love to alleviating and merry circularity. Nature is a recurrent theme in Jacob Njoroge, but it treats it in an allegorical way. There are many other Kenyan painters met randomly exposures: Richard Kimathi, Michael Mbai, Richard Onyango, Shade Kamau, Tabitha Mburu, Amos, Sabatian Kiarie, Peter Ngugi, Kama Shah, Samuel Githui, Elijah Ooko… Some affirm their predilection for the animals of the wild world - and never acknowledge not to have seen closely a lion or an elephant. They generally paint according to photographs or copying the ones the others.

If the artistic scene is largely dominated by the men, the women are not therefore absent. One counts about thirty artists exposing women occasional. Their work celebrating femininity and expressing their joys, their frustrations, their conquests also, and complexity to be a woman in a company of transition, found to be emphasized. Béatrice Ndumi collects various objects, generally pearls and cauris, which it sews on the fabric to form of the enigmatic figurines. In a vein minus naturalist, Carolyn Njeri painted on fibers of banana trees of the shaded landscapes and blurs which tend towards the abstraction. “The struggle” of Jane Githingi shows a small woman despaired, about to be absorbed by a tidal wave of forms which point out its indefinite fears and sexual oppression. The militant women expose too. Tabitha Wathuku is regarded as a “messenger”. She uses all the fabric to make space with freedom. She says to the women: You never excuse to be woman! The militancy of Turagah Hahnah “Ngaho” less aggressive but is also solved. Its painting suggests how much the women vanish to try to impose itself within their community on the alienating traditions.

There exists a Kenyan painting white. Three white artists try to escape out of a too narrow categorization and arrive, by various ways with personal syntheses. Timothy Brooke, installed in Kenya since 1947, formerly conceived 26 paintings starting from the photographs which it had taken during the turning of Out off Africa. They are now exposed to the Norfolk hotel, with the very colonial style. With the Serena hotel of Nairobi, one also discovers a superb series on Samburu, the women with the face crimped of pearls turned towards the rising sun, and the thin men milking of the cows. Brooke is an acute aware of the autonomy of the pictorial field; “an art of balance, purity and peace” to take again the ambition which was that of Matisse. Alternate Mary Parcel, according to the challenges which it gives itself to a given moment, the abstract with energetic pallet of electric colors and the explicit reference to the post-impressionism in peaceful and radiant gardens. It is close to the Kenyan young talents which it helps and forms. Like Geraldine Robarts, another accomplished artist. She was professor with Makerere between 1964 and 1972, where she introduced the technique of the Batik, a process which consists in masking certain zones of a fabric with wax to prevent their impregnation by the dyeing. In front of disparate objects, fabrics, sheets of paperboard, aluminum parts, pieces of coral, Geraldine Robarts has an astonishing force of creation.

Contemporary literature

See: Kenyan Literature

Novels, news, accounts, and plays are many, but difficult to find out of Nairobi if they did not hold the attention of the large editors. In this field also, English dominates like language of expression, a situation which creates a dilemma for the authors who fight to reach a local assistantship and to find channels of publication. Let us announce the efforts of the collection Heinemann' S African Writers Series. The three Kenyan great authors are Ngugi wa Thiong' O, Meja Mwangi and Charles Manga. They have jointly to express in an already abundant work the search of identity of the black man vis-a-vis the alienation of the modern world, but their writing borrows different ways.

In a vein less bitter than Ngugi wa Thiong' O or Meja Mwangi and without spirit of dispute, Charles Manga who made a strong impression during the publication of His off Woman in 1971, then fifteen years later with Its off Woman off Mombasa , evokes its own disillusions vis-a-vis the marriage, with the friendship, the policy and repudiates alienation materialist of the elites. Its descriptions of the daily life are full with humor; realism turns sometimes to the obscenity as in another author of talent, David Mailler ( My Dear Bottle , 1973).

Writer of very promising theater, Francis Imbuga ( Shrine off Tears , 1993) wonders about the future of the African culture. Another young author, devoted in 2002 by Caine Prize, Binyayanga Wainaina, tells in Discovering Home the difficult return of a young Kenyan emigrated in South Africa in his native village. Most known of the women writers is Grace Akinyi Ogot which began its career by writing scripts for the BBC, before entering in policy and to become parliamentary. A collection of news, Unwinding Threads, gives an outline of the female literature from where in particular Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye is distinguished (The Present Moment, Victoria, Murder in Majengo). Other contemporary writers deserve to be quoted: Thomas Akare (The Slums), Sam Kahiga ( Flight to Juba ), Bramwell Lusweti ( The Way to the Town Hall ) and Martha Gellhorn ( The Weather in Africa ).

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