Nobody Has Time For Tasteless Kenyan Music

There has been an ongoing spat pitting local musicians against radio presenters, with the former blaming the latter for lack of airplay.

It all started when rapper Brian Omollo, alias Khaligraph Jones, put up a post in which he offered to fund 10 Kenyan media personalities on 10-day trip to Nigeria.

According to the Testimony hit maker, the purpose of the excursion is for the presenters to asses whether they have any fans in the West African country claiming that they play a lot of their music.

“I want to see if some of y’all will be recognized by your Nigerian fans or if you even have fans at all here, it would be very sad if you don’t though,” Khaligraph  wrote in part.

Rapper Nyamari Ongegu, known to many as Nyashinski, chimed in on the debate when he lambasted Mambo Mseto host Willy M. Tuva for promoting Tanzanian artists at the expense of local musicians.

Earlier on, Tuva had shared a clip of his interview with Taita Taveta Governor Granton Samboja.

When asked which music he supports, the first-term Governor said he loves Kwangaru and this did not go down well with Nyashinski who claimed the clip had been cropped.

Since then, there has been a lot of finger pointing between Kenyan musicians and media personalities, radio presenters to be precise.

While it’s a fact that Tanzanian and Nigerian music dominates our local stations, the blame doesn’t lie entirely on the shoulders of the presenters.

More often than not, the songs that are played our radio stations are selected by a team of music experts or based on requests from fans.

As such, it is wrong to take issue with presenters when all they do is play from a cued playlist. However, in very few cases the presenters are allowed to slot some songs in.

There have been remarkable improvements the kind of music that is churned out by Kenyan musicians, however, a lot more still needs to be done to be at par with their Nigerian or Tanzanian counterparts.

So instead of complaining everyday, local musicians should pull up their socks or else Naija and Bongo music will be the norm because ain’t nobody got time for tasteless Kenyan music.