Mbui, Mbutch and Tempa
In the morning Sven went to a very small church at Takaye Village to attend a divine service. Sven is pagan and usually he doesn´t go to church. This morning he just wanted to get some impressions about the music that is been played at an east African liturgy but unpredictably he was a big attraction of this Sunday morning. First of all, the preacher asked Sven to talk about himself and where he was from and what he was doing in Kenya. Then the preacher advised one of his assistants to sit next to Sven to translate the whole sermon from Kisuaheli to English. Unfortunately Sven had slept for less than 4 hours the night before and he couldn´t avoid falling asleep momentarily… After more than two hours of preaching the liturgy was at long last finished.
In the afternoon we went to a funeral. Three days earlier an old man who lived in the neighboring village had passed away and Raymond had to pay a short visit. He invited us to accompany him and so we had the chance to spend an hour on a traditional African funeral which lasts 4 days. At first sight it looked as if it was a public festival. Loud music was played, sweets and beer was sold and there were at least 300 people around, some of them dancing, some talking to the neighbours and also some crying as the coffin was lowered into the earth…
In the evening we met with Mbuch a friend of Marie and were invited to come to Mbuis place who has been his teacher in percussion. He is studying traditional music and takes courses at a kind of training camp for musicians. They get up at the latest at 5 O’clock in the morning to work first on their physical fitness. They run about 14 kilometers and pump iron… Later on they begin to practice the many traditional instruments. After smoking some Ganja in the afternoon they keep on playing until they go to bed around 10 O’clock.
It was the first time to record some musicians of our generation who played traditional instruments. They had a modern approach to several traditional rhythms but it was still very well connected to the roots of the older generation.
After the recordings we all just sat down to drink some bottles of cold Tusker and played until night. All these of these musicians were very open minded and warmhearted. Agnieszka had some good conversations with Tempa about the development possibilities in the slums of Nairobi as well as the meaning of hope, help and support in this context for Africans in general. Tempa who has been playing in a band with Mbui and Mbuch has found his destiny in being a development helper in the slums of Nairobi as he told Agnieszka. And Mbui, our host, opened a cultural center in Malindi which takes in musicians and dancers in the form of a camp. All together they coming up with and exchanging ideas – like establishing a tree nursery to keep the camp and the idea alive.
It was a great pleasure to spend this afternoon with Mbuch, Mbui, Tempa and their friends.
Listen to some extracts of their wonderful music.
vocal session at Mbui’s place
last take sengenya music
Thursday, 22 Jul 2010 at 17:12
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