Back in the mid-1990s, I was in Johannesburg doing an errand for a Kenyan producer who had requested me to deliver a batch of recordings to contacts in South Africa hoping to find distribution networks in that country. The music was the emerging Nairobi urban pop with a strong American influence but I had also carried others of older music of the late 1970s and 1980s as presents for friends in South Africa.
The all important contact was Peter Tladi, then director at the CCP-EMI record company, one of SA’s biggest record companies. So a listening session was arranged.
Tladi rushed through the songs and I could sense his disinterest grow as the tracks moved on. He said the music was not original and therefore had no reason to take it on. “Don’t you have music in Kenya,’’ he asked.
A bit embarrassed by his statement, I decided to try and salvage our country’s reputation by playing one of the CDs I had carried for friends which featured a compilation of the best of Kenyan songs. The first song was Charonyi Ni Wasi and Tladi sat up and half way through paused the disc and said: “This is what you should be offering me.”
Honestly, it would never have occurred that he would like it considering that the song is in Kitaita and a typical late 1970s genre that fused rumba and a bit of urban benga. In Kenya, it won a silver disc certification for sales exceeding 30,000 units –big in its time - and later won rave reviews overseas as a driving factor in the sales of the compilation CD Kenya Dancemania, which was a breakthrough release for Kenya music in the international market.
All to confirm the adage that a good song is a good song in any language, this Habel Kifoto’s original is a classic that resonates with freshness across time and cultures.
A week ago, Kifoto answered his trumpet call ending an illustrious music career that has produced a pedigree of great songs that will live on and on. He was in his mid-60s and leaves behind seven children.
A funeral committee is meeting daily from 6pm at the St Andrews Church in Nairobi with a burial date tentatively set for this week. “The committee includes family members, musicians, friends and the army,’’ said Major (Rtd) David Kibe, whose relationship with Kifoto goes back to 1969 when the two met.
The two had been working on what was to be Kifoto’s fifth solo album - his first in a decade since he retired from the army in 2002 and had planned to release it later in the year. Says Kibe: “We had spoken last Friday and planned a session this week to polish the tracks but the basic recording is complete and I will do the final touches and mix it in time for release in November as he had wanted it.”
He describes the departed friend as a true Kenya legend who leaves a legacy of great music and a reputation for humility and fine leadership skills that are not easy to find. “I knew Habel as an easily likeable, non-confrontational man who used his good sense of humour to navigate through tense moments and steer discussions and situations to safe waters,” Kibe says.
The two had a special relationship as musicians and friends and it was Kifoto who invited Kibe to the Strollers Band at Bamboo Nightclub in Nairobi in 1969 and from there the two later became founding members of the Maroon Commandoes Band.
News of his sudden death sent shockwaves within the music fraternity where he had made many friends and admirers. “To me it is a tragedy for such a person to die because he meant so much to so many of us,’’ said John Katana of Them Mushrooms.
The shock was also felt in Mombasa where he had acquired property and where his late wife Esther Kifoto was laid to rest eight years ago. When he got a call about the bad news, Safari Sounds bass player Juma Mzingo did the unthinkable and called the late Kifoto’s number. When it was answered by the wails and weeping of Kifoto’s daughter, Mzingo then knew for sure that Kifoto had passed on.
In his tribute, veteran musician Juma Toto, who met Kifoto in 1967, had fond memories of the departed artiste. Kifoto had absconded school to play music and joined Toto as a drummer and vocalist in the Stereophonics Band, which performed at the Small World Nightclub at Ambassadeur bus stop in Nairobi. He worked with them for four months before returning to school to complete his fourth form examinations.
After his examinations, he became a full-time musician, playing several instruments and most remarkably rising to become one of the greatest composers of his generation.
Over the years, he switched to guitar and later learnt the keyboard and saxophone.
Many others who knew Kifoto term him as a gentleman who handled success with humility and never allowed it to get to his head. “He was a decent man and I shall truly miss him as a musician and as a friend,’’ said radio personality Fred Machoka. As a leading composer and band leader of the Maroon Commandoes, Kifoto is remembered for withstanding the tide that threatened to drown Kenyan urban music in the 1970s and early 1980s with a dual assault by Tanzanian and Congolese music.
Significantly, this was also the era when Kenyan music was going regional with a strong surge in mainly Kikuyu and Luo music which though rich in their own way created a vacuum in the mainly urban segment, in effect creating an entry point for Tanzanian and DRC music. Both genres had their advantage with Tanzanians riding on their better command and use of Kiswahili to easily enter the market while the Congolese had a great sense of dance and display, which easily appealed.
At one time, Kenyan music was nearly being phased out of the map in the major urban market but Kifoto held steady and continued to turn out songs in Kiswahili that had urban appeal. He finally broke the juggernaut in 1972 when his Charonyi Ni Wasi cracked the urban market and became a major national hit with clear resonances in the international market.
The irony is noted by Kibe in that it took a song with a regional medium to break the stranglehold of the outsiders and create a new variety of Kenyan urban music. “It was a magical song that enforces the reality of power of music to transcend all barriers,’’ he says. The late Kifoto had other hits like Uvivu Ni Mbaya, Riziki Haivutwi Na Kamba and Christina.
Kibe feels that this rare achievement served a vital incentive to Kenyan musicians to be undeterred in looking to their own heritage and enforced the universal view that music knows no language. And above all, much thanks to Habel Kifoto for showing that greatness is a not a function of arrogance and for touching so many people in different ways.
Source: The Star
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