Another Dosage of Kenyatta Hill

Kenyatta Hill and Culture were in Malawi in June last year where they performed in Blantyre and Lilongwe. I attended the Blantyre show at Mibawa. 

Given an opportunity I can get to their show again and again. In fact everything being equal, I won't miss their Sand Festival show for anything.

And as an icing of the cake this time round Andrew Tosh is going to be part of the festival this year and for a reggae fanatic this is more than one can ask for.

However, my excitement cannot fail me to look and question the pattern when it comes to inviting the international acts. Of course I know of same music stars that perform in Amsterdam year in, year out as an annual fixture.

However for Malawi at least we have had Fanton Mojah, Luciano, and twice Morgan Heritage brought by Born African Productions. While Sand Festival has brought Busy Signal twice and of course through Impakt Events, Lucius Banda's company that organises the festival, also brought into the country Kenyatta and Culture.

Now the announcement that has come to light is that Kenyatta Hill and Culture alongside Andrew Tosh will headline the musical face of the festival this year.

What I could not fail to notice is that Impakt Events is fond of inviting artist severally. I don’t know the business of bringing these guys into the country and 

I will therefore base my opinions from the heart.

Which is that we have numerous artists of reggae out there who can as well be invited into the country so that we have an opportunity to appreciate them the way we did last time Kenyatta and Culture came.

If we will go to Kenyatta's performance again, it will be for the fact that he is a great entertainer, there are others though who will not be very excited because they already watched his performance last year.

It surely would be double exciting to have new big names. Of course there is Andrew Tosh. The similarity between Andrew and Kenyatta is that they are both sons of the greatest reggae icons, Peter Tosh and Joseph Hill respectively.

Having died in 1987, Peter Tosh does not resonate so well with today's youthful audience whose attraction is a different genre altogether. Joseph Hill died in 2006 and because he was one artist no world music lover would ignore, he managed to interest the modern youth even though they are into some other funny genres.

Now with this when Kenyatta who is now 39, stepped in it was all easy for him unlike Andrew who has rode more on the songs left behind by his fallen legendary father. Of course Kenyatta too has fully adopted the sharp social commentary and catchy rhythms characteristic of his father's music.

While Kenyatta's debut single, “Daddy,” backed by a masterful roster of musicians including Sly Dunbar and Dean Fraser spelt the way for him and helped him to make own name, for 51-year-old Andrew who first release a single in 1985 two years before the demise of his father, not much has happened.

The other good thing with Andrew is that he has had it all, having been exposed to the music of his father's group The Wailers from an early age. Andrew also performed two songs at his funeral, "Jah Guide" and "Equal Rights". Imagine! He is also nephew to living reggae legend Bunny Wailer.

His work with producer Winston Holness on his debut album, Original Man was followed in 1989 by a second album, Make Place For The Youth, which was recorded in the United States and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album.

Andrew Tosh also toured with The Wailers Band in 1991. But if you ask many, not one will know Andrew Tosh's own tracks. This is unlike the Marley children who have managed to popularise their songs.

Well, while I am looking forward to their performance I just could not help it, but point out a few things.

Computer Manipulated Reggae Music

You remember those days when artists would go into the studio and separately record all the guitars, drum beat, vocals and all the attendant instrumentation without having to programme it using a computer and lose out on human artistic display.

There are a group of music lovers that are now making choices to stick to the old kind of music production and are therefore shunning the heavily computer manipulated music.

Reggae music is considered organic music and this is the reason it has a sub-genre called roots rock which purely created using human innovation and somehow sticking to the one drop concept where the foot drum is evenly spaced for effect.

While you would expect the old guys to be interested in the same, there is a youthful and unsung talented reggae star in the making Chipiriro Kuntenjera, a banker by profession who has started a project to record an album that will be recorded using the old ways.

His challenge is that because there is too much dependence on the computers when it comes to music and sound production we are losing out on having talented studio session artists not to mention studios that can have that kind of patience and skill to put up with such a challenge.

What is disheartening is that these days many so called musicians plunge into the world of music without any appreciation that music is an art and that they ought not only be at their artistic best when producing it but they also must realise that they have those musical juices flowing into their veins.

Ever wondered why Bob Marley or Peter Tosh music is still competing shoulder to shoulder with the latest reggae productions on world scale?

These days because most of the bassline, the drumbeat, the lead and rhythm guitars are just robotically programmed in the computers and then its several variations picked and recorded as a form of an instrumental background that is fused with the vocals it becomes laughable when an artist is called to perform their music with a live band.

If the production won’t be perpetually off key the whole live performance time then just realise that they are in fact not performing at all but just lip-synching pre-recorded music that is playing in the background.

It’s like a magician performing his trickery by setting a large screen before the audience and let some video recordings of his supposed frolics play. People are robbed in such instances.

Now if we have artists like Chipiriro who is currently practising hard at one local studio in Chirimba in preparation for the live recording, they need to be encouraged because this is the preservation of skills and art, not only of playing musical instruments but recording music using the less deceitful means.

You rarely find the later day Eric Paliani, Collen Ali, Peter Likhomo and even the youthful Faith Mussa or Patience Namadingos who will courageously grab a guitar and perform live without disappointing.

What is even reassuring is that even when foreign musical artists come to perform in the country they love to associate or use the skills and talents of those that will give us their raw displays and delivery when it comes to playing the musical instruments.

I await the day when even the urban artists in the country who are now bulging the music industry seams take up the challenge and start giving the consumers the raw talent and skill which matters more in the world of art.