It is easy to imagine a rap battle. But a wedding song battle? Move over Kayamba Roots. Step up Steve Kay. To Kayamba Roots, nothing personal. Because as far as made-for-radio-and-dance-floor Kenyan wedding songs go, not even Jua Kali Band’s “My Dear’ can hold a candle to ‘Mbe Omukhasi’.

And to the all time Luhya hit song Mulongo, we’ve had good times at weddings and in busaa powered Mulembe Nights. We carry with us those lit moments of family fun. You made us dance as only Africans can. Those Sunday afternoon nyama choma plots- that we love so much for killing two birds with one stone: slamming hangovers  and redeeming ourselves to the wife and kids- remain with us.

It’s been real.

On to the new-ish. Steve Kay broke new ground with ‘mbe omukhasi’ a love story that’s more than your average Kenyan wedding song. I dare say that ‘mbe omukhasi’ plays in the league of my bukusu darling and Eric Wainaina’s ‘daima‘. At least as far as its ability to vavoom the competition and lord over the collective social space. To understand this bold claim, we head first to the dance floor, late in the night in a typical Kenyan nightspot.

FINDING A SPOT FOR MBE OMUKHASI IN THE KENYAN REVELER EXPERIENCE

Every so often circa the ungodly hour of 0300 hrs, inebriated silly and having given up on adulting, we would request the Dj to have Kayamba Roots’s ‘mulongo’ on the replay. On lazy nights we often got our wish. On popular nights, times over, the Dj would ignore our request lest s/he upsets the track order of his Kenyan Music set. We will discuss more why this perchance for ‘mulongo’ later in this article. For now, lets talk a little bit more about the “Kenyan music” Dj set.

First, the music (the Kenyan music Dj set) comes on with absolutely no warning. You’d be there dancing to the groovy Bruno Mars, next thing: the unmistakable percussion of African music blasting through the speaker.

A Kenyan wedding song here; Kenyan Hip Hop somewhere, invariably a Kenyan gospel song too. Heck! Throw in folk circumcision song. It’s all good. Provided the songs are primarily in any of Kenya’s major ethnic languages in the ration 1:1:1:1 ad infitum. One Kamba song, a Luhya one, definitely a Luo song. Perhaps a Kalenjin song and so forth. It is at these moments when we scream loudest when the Dj auto-cues: “Kama imeshika sana, wapi nduru?”

Sounds of our fathers

The sound of instruments from our ancestors is one that we find hard to resist. As a consequence, as the Dj plays the Kenyan music set, the dance floor is invariably packed. There we are: hips gyrating, hands clasping, shaking shoulders and sweat dripping. Thanks to the drink and music, for those fleeting minutes we are all Kenyan. Merrily dancing to mugithi, kambeka and others in mockery of the divisions among us, brought on by frivolous representations of our ethnic diversity.

Over the recent past, the Luhya music spot in that charade we just described belonged to ‘mulongo‘, ‘my dear or Rev. Joseph Shisia Wasira’s hit ‘omundu omulosi‘. Of the three, the former is the more popular one. This popularity of ‘Mulongo’ stems from a special quality. An acclaim that ‘Mbe omukhasi’ now threatens to own.

MULONGO: THE ULTIMATE KENYAN WEDDING SONG

What ‘Mulongo’ used to be to us, ‘Mbe Omukhasi’ promises to be. And better. Granted that in a live performance, ‘Mulongo’ remains the quintessential Kenyan wedding song. The Kayamba Roots hit allows us to Mugithi train to Luhya music. In doing so, ‘Mulongo’ allows us to temporarily abandon our tribal buffoonery as it bridges eastern and western Kenyan cultures using music and dance.

‘Mulongo’ is a luhya song commonly danced in a style -Mugithi train- rooted among the communities from eastern/central Kenya. In a cosmopolitan setting such as a wedding, it was the perfect song to get everyone mingling in dance.

ENTER MBE OMUKHASI – THE NEW ULTIMATE KENYAN WEDDING SONG?

What follows is the anatomy of the perfect crossover hit. First, ‘mbe omukhasi’ adopts a technique common among hip hop artists who pay homage to their hoods and hoomies through name dropping. Secondly, Steve Kay infuses humor and clever word pun play as a bridge between the different worlds.

Just like what marriages have been known to achieve, It’s clear that this – a bridge across real or imagined divisions – is what Steve Kay reaches for with ‘mbe omukhasi’. The effort is clear even in the mundanities such as its You Tube description. ‘Mbe omukhasi’s description embraces the song’s intrinsic qualities that make it the crossover hit that introduced Steve Kay to the world. (First published on Mulembe Nation)