Trends in clubs mirror rot in our society

By PETER WANYONYI

NAIROBI: Our music was, allegedly, once so good. Older Kenyans with access to dog-eared copies of Viva and related Kenyan pop magazines from the 70s and 80s have nostalgic memories of a better, quieter time, when music was music and muggers did not yet exist on Nairobi’s mean streets.

Except those days the streets were not mean; policemen wore shorts, and were more likely to give you a glass of milk to sober you up if they found you drunk on Moi Avenue, than the modern equivalent who wear tight trousers and will shoot you for looking at them without the required amount of respect in your gaze.

Bell-bottom

Music was kinder, too. You could even watch a music video with your parents and suffer only mild concern as your mum wondered why everyone had flared bell-bottom trousers, giant shoes and hair that seemed to reach for the heavens, the almighty Afro. But then those days are no more.

They have been replaced by a generation seemingly so depraved that nothing is beyond them. Social scientists tell us in deadpan tones that we are in for even more surprise.

They mean fatal shock, because the music and club scene in Kenya today is beyond what even the most sinful cities in the world can dream up.

Unlike all other trends in the country, though, the club scene doesn’t seem to follow the money curve. Generally, in Kenya (and especially Nairobi) the poorer the place and the seedier the social scene, the more obscene the kind of “entertainment” you find there.

Trends

 But not with clubs, which seem to observe a reverse trend — the wealthier a place is, or the closer to the city centre, the more X-rated the shows.

This, apparently, reflects the risks involved; the Kenyan club scene is a strict night-only affair, which means those small, polite clubs in the poorer suburbs are strictly drinking joints.

 The barmaids are dressed like housemaids at work, and they are actually people’s wives — barmaids in Kenya invariably being women.

These are places that patrons know so well that they have tabs with their names on them, and they can even drink on credit.

Not so in the wealthy parts of the city.

There, it is all about showing off money, ill-gotten or otherwise, and participating in the most outrageous of club shows.

Sanity

The music played in those places is so nasty that you cannot even listen to it when alone — it would leave you questioning your own sanity.

The dance moves are just as mental, with a ‘twerking’ craze having hit Nairobi, and which involves moves that no one under the age of 70 should be allowed to witness.

Our middle classes and their employers, it appears, have gone mad in their pursuit of ever-more-risqué fun and entertainment, and the money has followed them.

The pseudo-sex shows, too, have headed to where the money is.

They have left the neighbourhood pub, thank heavens, to remain little more than a place for one to go sob into one’s beer after another punishing day at work.