Man who brought Franco to Awendo

Retired President Daniel Moi and Phares Kanindo. [PHOTO: FILE]

One of the most striking features of the Kenyan sugar belt is the sad song of the guinea fowl. In Song of Lawino, the late Okot p’Bitek says that this mournful sound is the spotted bird’s way of asking God why, of all the animals under the sun, only it was slapped with a bald head.

‘Awendo’ is the name given by the Luo to the guinea fowl, and from which a sleepy town in South Nyanza derives its name. The fowl’s sighs are potent echoes of these regions’ sickening loneliness before independence.

It was in these deserted lands that the late Phares Oluoch Kanindo was born, on November 29, 1942, in a small hut behind what is today Awendo town. After leaving Alego Mur (in Central Nyanza’s Siaya) in the 19th century, his father had first settled in a small village called Nyabera, to the east of Awendo town.

And here, the child’s mirthful nature would bloom and consume his entire life. At the time of his death, on last Saturday, Oluoch Kanindo was arguably the earliest known promoter of Kenyan music.

Born in neighbouring Manyatta village, veteran journalist Philip Ochieng had met Kanindo at Lwala Intermediate School where both were pupils. “He was very outspoken. He was also a crowd-puller.”

‘Crowd-puller’ is what John Kanindo, his elder brother, means when he describes Oluoch as ‘ja mbola’ in his early days at Lwala Intermediate, Koderobara, Pe-Hill, and Luule in Uganda. Later, in politics, that character would earn Kanindo the name

‘Galamoro’, in reference to ‘the whole world of people’ which used to gather and sip from his oratorical milk-gourd.

Mr Japheth Rachuonyo is Kanindo’s nephew. He observes that politics may have begun entering his uncle’s life after the Uganda days. “It was Oginga Odinga who secured a scholarship which saw my uncle study for a Diploma in Radio and Wireless Electronics in Czechoslovakia from 1961 to 1963.”

Thus Kanindo landed a job at the Kenya News Agency (KNA), went full-throttle into music promotion, and soon he was the Kenyan CEO of the Electronic & Musical Industries Ltd (EMI). Mr. Rachuonyo’s memory of him at the time is a ladies’ man who donned very flashy attire.

But Oluoch would not stay with the London-based EMI for long. Singer Joseph Kamaru remembers that he met the promoter at a Nairobi music studio called ‘Hyperdelic,’ then found around the old American embassy.

Smeared oil
“He was a jovial, wonderful man,” says Kamaru. “I had gone to record some Kikuyu and Kamba musicians when I met him in the late 1970s. He was recording DO Misiani, Awino Lawi, and Collela Mazee.”

Mr Rachuonyo recalls that, in 1973, Kanindo sponsored their local Ranen Primary School choir. “My music teacher was Mr Timon Opiyo Mbani,” says Rachuonyo. “We were transported to Homa Bay; we boarded the ship to Kisumu, and then the train to Nairobi. We recorded our song under Andrew Crawford Productions, with POK.”

‘POK’ was the acronym for ‘Phares Oluoch Kanindo,’ and Mr Rachuonyo says Mzee Kenyatta loved these school choirs.
Benga musician Tom Kodiyo of the Music Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK) recalls how he first met Kanindo in 1972.

“As Victoria Kings Band, George Ramogi had led us to record a song with EMI that year,” Kodiyo says.“Kanindo was the tidiest person I had seen, and he also knew how to spoil himself. He was so neat that, soon, rumour erupted that Kanindo often stretched himself on the bed after bath, where he would then be thoroughly smeared with oil in his house.”

The Congolese singers Kabila Kabanze (Les Mangelepa) and Kasongo wa Kanema (Super Mazembe) both doubt that their Kenyan success would have been possible without Kanindo.

“I met him in 1976,” says Kanema. “He was inspirational. We composed the song ‘Kanindo’ to honour him. We later recorded ‘Maga’ and ‘Ati Mama.’” On his part, Kabanze says Kanindo helped them record ‘Aoko,’ ‘Sakina,’ and ‘Nyako Konya’ in 1977.
Kabanze reminisces, “He was a polished man. He paid us well. He also bought the instruments we lacked.”

Mr Rachuonyo observes that few are aware of Kanindo’s promotion of music beyond benga.

“He encouraged traditional Luo music,” he says. “It was he who recorded Ogwang’ Kakoth, the Nyatiti player from Alego; Obudo Kamolo, the ‘dodo’ singer; Oguta Lie Bobo, the accordion player; and the orutu virtuoso Ayany Jowi.”

It is said that the late Kanindo had a hand in Luambo Makiadi’s visit to Kenya in 1988. It was he who hosted Franco at Awendo stadium that year, where people thronged from as far as the shores of Lake Victoria, in Gwassi.

Then a student at Rapogi High School, Mr Peter Odundo (now Principal, Kanga-Onditi Secondary in Nyatike Constituency) remembers how they danced to Franco’s  Mamou from inside the school compound. He says, “We could hear Franco’s live voice.”

But it was as a politician that the late Kanindo’s skill glowed. He did contest for the Homa Bay Constituency seat in 1974, and was beaten by the late Achieng Alloyce. But when he rebounded in 1979, he was successful for two consecutive terms. That was how he became the Assistant Minister for Education.

Mboya’s assassination
“If you let him speak before you did,” says Mr Anthony Onyango Odack, a teacher at Minyenya Secondary, Rongo, “you were ruined. The crowd would walk away in stitches when Kanindo was through.”

Sometime in 2011, this writer remembers Kanindo campaigning for the Migori County’s senatorial seat in Kameji, Rongo, and the orator’s two carotid arteries stuck out with passion on both sides of his neck.

“He was silwal (light-skinned),” says Prof Peter Amuka, literature lecturer at Moi University, Eldoret. “That is treasured in Luo culture. His skill also made him attractive, and he effectively utilized both.”

These attributes came handy when Kanindo visited Mzee Kenyatta to mend fences between the Luo and the Kikuyu after Mboya’s assassination and, much later, as the Executive Chairman of the South Nyanza Sugar Co Ltd in the late 1980s.

A musicologist at Maseno University, Dr Rose Ongati says that the promoter was fiercely territorial. “In two cases – when I worked with a Nairobi promoter called Jojo, and when doing research on the late DO Misiani – Kanindo was unhappy that I had bypassed him,” says Ongati. “But, undoubtedly, his legacy is in the fact that Kenyan benga music walked to the outside world from his hands.”