It’s probably fair to say that Africa’s music ecosystem is oThen overlooked in the UK as a landscape of popular music stardom. The reasons for this oversight are unclear and certainly unjustiThed, as it is evidently not for lack of quality. In Kenya, and Nairobi specifically, there is a scene bubbling which teems with talent and ambition. It’s a city in which many of the great traditions of music in Africa are coalescing with modern-day rap, soul, RnB and electronic music. Nairobi has form here. It’s in the Green City in the Sun that the pluralistic tradition of Benga music, which combines sounds from Cuba to the Congo, was first born.
Blinky Bill is a frontrunner in this burgeoning scene, helping to reinvigorate a spirit of both global vision and ancestral reverence to create a synergistic musical and cultural identity. “At this point, we need to be able to give the rest of the world a version of what is authentically ours,” he says. “We’re picking from our heritage, but also messing with other sounds from around the world.”