Tedd Josiah: Day anti-Kibaki song forced me into exile, and why I quit music

Edmond Josiah, popularly known as Tedd Josiah, is just settling in his new home tucked away in the serene, leafy neighbourhood of Runda in Nairobi.

Past the old-school black gate only guarded by an alarm bell, the compound is vast and stupendous.

An asphalt and gravel driveway terminates a few leg walks at the intersection of a standalone bungalow on the right and a warehouse workshop on the left.

The spacious workshop is the new station for his startup, the Joka Jok Luxury Pure Leather brand.

Adjoining the bungalow is an immaculate green backyard, spacious enough to lay two dome tents should there arise a need to host a barbeque party or a cocktail.

For many dreamers, this would pass for a perfect retirement home. But not for the 53-year-old Tedd Josiah, the legendary music producer.

“We wanted a much better place that we can feel comfortable hosting our clients who would love to visit but also provide a spacious workshop for our Joka Jok brand,” he says.

On this day Lifestyle sits with him, he is donning a lavender Kaunda suit garnished with a black pocket square and brown sandals.

A silver watch dangles on his left wrist and just like every other time you will see him, he isn’t missing one of his signature African bracelets on his right wrist.

Tedd wears a strong sweet designer scent that even a flu-infected nostril will quickly pick.

He’s spotting a stylish haircut and doesn’t seem bothered by the traces of grey hair showboating on his mutton chops beards.

I tease him that for a 50-plus-year-old, he is super stylish than most of his peers I know. He smiles.

“No more music production from me, but I still got my studio operational, I will show you around in a bit,” Tedd issues a disclaimer.

For over 30 years, Tedd knew no other career than music.

A career that, he says, hasn’t been rewarding in terms of royalty earnings despite most of his records remaining timeless more than 20 years later. He nevertheless reminisces his journey, which has had its fair share of ups and downs.

At one point, and at the height of the then Prime Minister Raila Odinga against then President Mwai Kibaki (now deceased) in the aftermath of the 2007 elections, Tedd fled on a self-imposed exile in the United Kingdom for fear of his life. More on that later.

“The future is entrepreneurship. That is why I am focusing on Joka Jok. I have gotten absolutely nothing from music. I have never received a single royalty payment. There is no point in making more hits yet those who benefit are not producers and musicians. How many millionaires has Kenya Copyright Music Society (MCSK) created? Yet those who lead MCSK are millionaires,” he says, with a tinge of disappointment in his statement.

Tedd is credited with identifying and producing for huge talents of yester years such as Nazizi Harji, Gidi Gidi Maji Maji, Kalamashaka, Hardstone, Nameless (David Mathenge), Wicky Mosh, Didge...

“I was introduced to Nazizi by his late uncle when she was just 15 years old, still in school. When I first met Gidi Gidi and Maji Maji at an event, they never liked each other but I told them if they wanted to record with me, they had to work together,” he reveals.

Unlike many producers, of all the songs he produced, the self-taught music producer never wanted his name mentioned on the records.

Unbwogable, Bless ma room, Kenyan Boy Kenyan Girl, Tafsri Hii, Tension, Uhiki, Kisumu 100, Megarider, Atoti, 4 in 1, Msichana Mwafrika are some of the big, timeless hits that Tedd produced.

In his 30 years in the business, Tedd created over 100 hit songs showcasing his versatility producing songs in all kinds of genres from Kikuyu folk songs, benga, hip hop, RnB, urban soul and pop.

“I would spend months with an artist before we recorded, it allowed me to align with their thoughts. I also asked them not to mention me in the records because I felt that was their space,” he says.

Raised by his grandmother, Tedd took a keen interest in music when he relocated from Nakuru during his early childhood to go live with his father in Chicago, US, where he grew up. “It's actually because of my dad that I got into music. In the 70s, we had a routine that every Saturday morning we would go to a record store and pick a few vinyls. Aged five I already had my little record player so we would listen to the likes of Bob Marley, The Eagles, Chuck Stevens, Harry Belafonte and music just became ingrained in me,” he says.

In 1983, having returned to Kenya a couple of years earlier, he found his way into the University of Nairobi Theater and was just in time to find African Heritage Band performing.

“It was a musical festival. I remember the legendary Jack Odongo was on keys, Gido Kibukosya on bass and Peter Semetimba, a Ugandan, was the flute player. It was mind-blowing. I had never experienced a beautiful live band such as that before. The performance, especially from the bass player, wowed me. I got so obsessed with music production but I also wanted to sing,” he says.

Eight years after finishing high school, Tedd one day walked into a studio at the time Samawati records and Andrew Conford were the hotcakes in town.

“Walking in the company of Peter Odera and we find Gido there as the producer. He listens to us and records our first album ‘Mia Ngima’ which also features Sally Oyugi, a talented vocalist,” he recalls.

The album turned out to be a shot on the leg but still Tedd took his wins.  “It didn’t do well because it was gospel and people at the time preferred pop. But hey! That album was the first Kenyan Compact Disc (CD) record to be produced. At the time the world was now shifting from Vinyl. It was a huge win for us, recording an album in a CD and having been signed by a German record label.”

At this point, it was time for Ted to shift his focus to production, a bug that couldn’t stop biting.

Self-taught producer

To think of Tedd Josiah as a genius as far as music production is concerned is an understatement.

Growing up in the 70s through to the 90s, there was no internet that would have otherwise provided a DIY (do it yourself) opportunity to the music maverick those days. “I literally taught myself music production. There was no internet. There was this popular show on TV by Jimmy Gathu ; Jimmy Jam, Jam-a-Delic on Saturday mornings. Gathu would play music videos and the behind the scenes. For me I would not be interested in the music videos but behind the scenes and live performances. I would be looking at Baby Face in his studio, how he composes, how he was coming up with tunes, and then I would go to my keyboard and try out something. There was no sampling. That’s how I grasped the basic concepts of production,” he says.

The tools of trade, in this case, a small keyboard connected by an artery to a little abacus computer and a Great Wall TV set for visuals of the beats.

“The computer could only save 786 MB, and that was it. So what I used to do was record the music as sequences then I would go to a studio and dump the sequences down the music on two tracks then put in the vocals.” For eight years this was the routine recording in his bedroom until he met the late Ahamed Emile Juma, founding member of Mombasa Roots Band and uncle to Nazizi.

“He had just returned from New York, where he had studied music technology. He was a music guru, an exceptional left-hand guitarist who could play like Carlos Santana the late.”

Tedd met Juma through Jimmy Gathu in 1995. He had just landed a gig to produce a commercial tune for Salama Condoms.

“He needed someone who could do jiggles and Gathu thought of me. When Emile saw me pull out my keyboard and artery compact, having been in the States, he knew I understood music production.”

For the jiggles, Tedd earned his first-time major musical paycheck, Sh3,000.

“It was a miracle. I had just quit gospel after years of struggling. I had never been paid so much money like that before. It was a good amount back then. That really motivated me,” he says.

Emile would later train and mentor Josiah sharing all his knowledge with him but that was subject to one condition.

“He challenged me to build an end-to-end jack cable from scratch using any local material that I could find. It took me weeks but I hacked it. The essence here was to teach me that there was more to music than just recording.”

Ted says it’s this engineering aspect that set him aside from other top producers of the time because he was able to understand how to capture sound from live bands and record. Years to follow Emile employed Ted at his Sync Sound studio as a music producer paying him Sh10,000 a month, until when he set up his own, and named it Blu Zebra.

“Interesting enough he would send artistes to come record at my studio and that’s how I discovered his nephew Nazizi, Hardstone, Prestone Band just to mention a few”. It's remarkable listening to Tedd pay homage to Emile, a man who died already proud of him but one who did not live long enough to see his apprentice quit what they both cherished.

“I am thankful to Emile. He was the first person who believed in my dreams, without Emile there would be no Tedd Josiah. These are the people worth celebrating. He gave so much contribution not just to me but the Kenyan music industry as a whole”

Forced to exile in UK

Years to follow, Tedd became a force to reckon with, a producer of stature second to none. Both artistes and corporate brands scrambled for his attention.

Unlike today, the industry had no money. Corporates were the major financiers of money that circulated in the Kenyan music industry. Most established bands and singers had to perform in Europe.

For his survival, Tedd depended mostly on commercials, with Salama and Trust condoms his regular clients. “There was no money then but because we were creating all these hits, corporates felt tapping into this new culture that had just taken off would be a good advertisement venue. So brands like Salama, Trust condoms, Fanta, Stravinsky Vodka, Coke, Sprite would offer us commercial gigs and we would invest the money generated in music.”

It’s during this time that Benson & hedges, a British cigarettes brand sponsored an all-Kenyan artiste concert for the first time, with top producers such as Tedd organising the event.

“Without that commercial push, I don’t think the Kenyan music industry would have flourished. I remember in 1997, Hardstone's first live concert at Nyayo stadium was paid for by Close up and he packed the stadium by himself.”

In 2002, Blu Zebra released another record that turned out to be an anthem, Unbwogable. It was the campaign song that got former President Mwai Kibaki into the State House after his predecessor Daniel Moi’s 24-year rule.  Kibaki’s camp adopted the song to propel their campaign.

The song whipped up the emotions of the masses and rallied them behind Kibaki, who was running against Moi’s preferred candidate, former President Uhuru Kenyatta. “Sometimes music is never going to pay the bills and you have to look for a way out. The mistake that I made in all honesty was to trust a politician and agree to push  Kibaki’s campaign narrative through music. Moi was going to leave anyway whether he liked it or not so I didn’t see any harm securing the bag,” Tedd says.

The well-travelled producer confesses that he was paid handsomely but that decision came to haunt him five years later, to the extent he then had to run for his dear life. “During the 2007 General Election, I was doing more than just music, I was producing commercials and adverts as well. I did a political commercial ‘Domo’ for Raila Odinga’s camp. The Domo campaign was so powerful and that made the Kibaki team livid. I remember Lucy Kibaki, (then First Lady, deceased) saying ‘tell those people to stop meddling in our advertising’ because the Domo campaign totally silenced their advertising,”  he says.

It wasn’t long before he took notice of suspicious men always trailing him whenever he went.

“The Domo campaign got me into a slight pickle because the next thing I knew, I was outside my office when suspicious guys showed up and tried to force me into their vehicle. I knew if I entered the vehicle I wasn’t going to come out alive. At the time I had beefed up my security and had bouncers. When they saw the commotion there was some confrontation and the guys who I think were police officers took off. After the incident, I dusted my passport and took off to the United Kingdom,” he says.

His wife’s death and finding his place as a widower

While fleeing to the United Kingdom, Tedd also left a crumbling marriage. He had met his first wife Cynthia Akoth in the 90s, got married in 2002, had two children, and by 2008 the union was no more. The couple had been together for over a decade.

“Things happened, I was younger then I could have made a few mistakes but of importance is that we both moved on and I made up with my kids. Our relationship right now is perfect,” he explains.

While in London, the composer began exploring ways on how he could become an entrepreneur.

It was a year since his return to Kenya in 2015 and the once famous Kisima Awards founder had invited the press for the launch of the SwaRnB record label, an ambitious project that died as soon as it was born.

Tedd signed Masauti and after producing a single hit, the Mombasa-based artiste cut ties with him.

“I felt I was investing so much money into an artist who didn’t really care so I folded up the project.”

Around that time, he met his late wife Regina Katar, a fashionista who introduced him to the world of fashion and the couple started creating garments.

Their happy union didn’t last long, with Katar passing on the morning of Saturday, September 30, 2017, just three hours after complaining of a headache. The widower was left with a three months old baby Jameela Wendo. (Jay Jay)

Katar died of low patent count, a rare condition that had gone undetected when she gave birth. At this point, Tedd’s eyes are turning red and watery as he fights back tears. With the wife gone, and a toddler under his care, Tedd felt the gods had abandoned him. “Raising Jay Jay was a nightmare especially during her formative years. I knew nothing about raising a three months old baby. Many were sleepless nights that at times had me almost giving up,” he says, fighting back tears.  Even those he counted on as best friends deserted him, and he was a stranger in his own world.

“Despite the difficult situation, Jay Jay gave me hope because I was all she had. I decided I would raise her alone without marrying another woman or taking her to a relative. To honour Regy (late wife) I decided to start the luxury brand Joka Jok, which are basically initials of our three names,” he says.

The leather bags brand start-up began with one machine and one artisan, but on this day I counted as many as seven machines, and about 10 artisans during my tour to the workshop. The bags are priced between Sh12,500 to Sh30,000.

Josiah’s method of marketing has been through Instagram, where he has 308,000 followers and vigorously markets Joka Jok bags through content creation, which he shoots and edits.

“We have some prominent people like the Chief Justice as our clients. We are also exporting to South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana, United States and the United Kingdom. We basically get orders from all over. It’s a good sign having been in business for just two years and by the way we are hiring.”

It’s been over an hour-and-a-half since taking our spaces in the backyard. Darkness is fast setting in, pushing the conversation to stutter. We retreat to his bar, he lights his favourite cigar, Camacho Corojo, and starts to tell me of his plans to venture into the cigar business.

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