When Luo songs were about ladies and not politics

Last week, I paid my rural folks a visit after a fairly long time. There was the usual excitement and no sooner had it died down than I went into my late father's wardrobe and started having a look at his heyday photos.

In the middle of my search, I stumbled upon a collection of several vinyl discs inside an old-fashioned leather briefcase. One by one, I took them out as I read the names of the artists and the titles of their songs. Majority of the albums in the collection were done by Congolese and Luo musicians, although there were a few soul and Christmas collections done by Jim Reeves.

What really caught my attention were the titles of the Luo songs. Many of them had politicians' names as the titles while a few had the names of ladies.

I decided to listen to one album performed by the all-time King of Luo rhumba, the late Ochieng Kabaselle. Among his many songs like 'Wuora Ogolla Adoyo', where he sings about his father's death while Ochieng, was in detention and 'Sikul Agulu', I fell in love with the composition prowess of Masanga ya Mbuta, as he was also famously known, in the song 'Zainabu'.

Zainabu is a beautiful girl who Kabaselle says has 'taken his heart and finished him completely.' She comes from the faraway lands of Ugenya, while the artist is from Asembo. As much as the two areas are in the present day Siaya County, they happen to be in the farthest opposite ends.

Kabaselle starts by telling his beautiful Zainabu Awino that he is experiencing disturbing and unending hiccups because they are apart.

The climax of the song is about the artist's plan to visit Zainabu which he knows will not be an easy task, but he is willing to do anything to make him get to see her even for a day. It loosely translates to:

"My brown and beautiful one, Ugenya and Asembo are far apart, but I am forced to come and see you. I will not take a bicycle because it might have a tragic accident and I will never see you again. Even a vehicle might have a grizzly accident and I might die never to see you again. I could have taken a helicopter, but that one too might crash before I get to you. Even a boat might sink across River Nzoia and I will never get to you. Unfortunately, there is no railway line to Ugenya and I'll just have to take the long walk to wherever you are for my safety."

As I was listening to the song, I started comparing Ochieng Kabaselle to the current crop of Luo rhumba and benga artists. I found out a continuously widening gap between the two.

The major reason is the love for easy money. I made an observation that Kabaselle was one artist who never sang a single song in praise of a politician or a political party. While his peers were busy composing anti-Moi and pro-Jaramogi songs, he kept his lyrics to singing about the ladies.

The current group of artists would do anything to come up with a song in less than half an hour about a political aspirant, an incumbent and especially about the opposition leader, Raila Odinga. Some are even said to approach prominent people for favors while dangling the "I will sing about you if you help me" carrot in exchange. The end result of this is a fifteen minute song, whereby hundreds of random names take more than ten minutes of the composition.

With the approaching general elections, there will be tens of such artistes cropping up, and there will be tens of political songs on the airwaves. Some will be big hits, while others will be complete misses.

As we approach the 18th anniversary of this Kenyan musical legend's death in December, Luo musicians should get back their groove on and compose songs that will make them unforgettable. When Kabaselle wrote and sang about the beautiful ladies like Zainabu, Millicento, Jackie, Achi Maria among others, he knew that every man has a special lady in his life. And when he did not do political songs, he knew that not every man likes politics and not every man bows down to political demi-gods.