While some Nairobi residents think drill has overshadowed the gengetone movement, a new school creatives are using storytelling and social engagement to keep the hypnotic dancehall hybrid alive. While I would argue that puffery is necessary, it all comes down to the key players: in this case, the artists who champion the sound.
Over time, music evolves from main genres and like distributaries flowing away from the river, sub-genres crop up, assembling a hybrid sound. In the same way, the Kenyan sound has evolved from Kapuka and Genge ruling the aughts, to the gengetone reign over the last three or four years on Kenyan airwaves.
The emergence of Drill has converted listeners not only in Kenya but all over Africa. The hour economy makes music consumers fast, impatient and unforgiving to redundant sounds. The entertainment industry thrives under codependent conditions.
Fun music goes best with a mass of people consuming intoxicants under the influence of thumping music. Gengetone thrived with a single recipe, the dancehall-inspired beats and raunchy lyrics. Then, for two years while the world was languishing in the Covid lockdowns, the entertainment industry experienced a huge blow. Apart from artists struggling to make ends meet, genre powerhouses like gengetone suffered deteriorating listenership due to its party-like structure. Pioneer acts such as Ethic and Ochungulo family were in murky waters.
Ethic was fast losing listenership due to controversial lyrics the public felt were championing sexual abuse. While the topic is always a debate among music consumers, I always felt the real challenge was the type of language they chose. In this case, they preferred to use Sheng slang over English. Slang is mostly derived and it is often a mixture of Kiswahili words which have been flipped so as to be understood by a certain group of people.
