The crème dè la crème of the Kenyan music recording industry recently got together for an exclusive screening of Sonic Nation: Sounds of Kenya, a documentary that trails the evolution of Kenya’s sound over the last century, at the Únseen cinema on the twelfth floor of the picturesque space and lounge in Kilimani called “Unseen Nairobi” — with its scenic city views.
The over hour-long video includes voices from some of the people who have shaped Kenyan music through the years; Fred Obachi Machoka (OGW), John Katana, Tim Rimbui, Dr. Donald Otoyo, Peter Odera, Clemmo, Gabriel Torome, David Murithii, Eric Wainaina, Shaffie Weru, Suzanne Gachukia, Tedd Josiah and many other legendary figures from the recording industry.
Sonic Nation is a powerful chronicle of Kenya’s sound recording industry, told through the voices of those who built it. From the pioneers who shaped its earliest foundations to contemporary players driving its evolution, the documentary captures the spirit, resilience and creativity that have defined Kenya’s musical identity across our independent decades.
And it was all put together by one Eric Musyoka as its producer over the last several months, assisted by Angela ‘Shinde’ Mwadanda (herself once a performer in the girls’ group “Tattuu” in the early 2000s, and still radiant as finest vintage wine), and now both at RIKE (the Recording Industry of Kenya).
“The history of Kenya’s recording industry is rich, layered and deeply intertwined with the country’s socio-cultural evolution,” says Boniface Mwalii, Chairman of EAJAC (East African Journalists in Arts & Culture), who was in attendance – alongside other famous guests like Amani (the ‘Bad Boy’ girl), Adipo Sidang (Parliament of Owls), and Angela ‘Rabbo’ Ndambuki, corporate legal chieftain in the recording industry.
“This documentary was made to capture it all,” Eric Musyoka said at the launch. “From the post-independence era when broadcasters had limited locally recorded content while live bands remained the primary source of Kenyan sound; to the transition into FM radio and the emergence of bold, visionary producers who defied convention to shape and amplify the many sounds of Kenya. The journey has been nothing short of transformative.”
His own journey is symbolic of that of the recording industry, so worth a look.
Eric Musyoka, or “Syoks” as he is sometimes affectionately abbreviated by players in the industry, recalls first listening to local Kamba benga with those distinct “tiri-tiri-tiri” guitar strings that all Kenyans know, played fast and loose with footloose musicians with flute-like voices; knee-bangers who hop across the stage like melody-frenzied grasshoppers with the reflex of the musical beats.
In the year 2013, Dr Alfred Mutua, a three-time Cabinet Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Tourism, and now the Labour portfolio, would build a beautiful “Machakos Peoples’ Park,” but in the late 1980s and the early 90s, as Eric Musyoka recalls, the rage in the area was the mobile discos, courtesy of one D. S. Njoroge — who was both events organiser and owner of his own recording studio —and who took his mobile discotheques to Ukambani.
“Reggae, ragga, Lingala,” Eric Musyoka says, “Dancehall music, that was what D.S. Systems by D.S. Njoroge was all about in his D.I.S.C.O.s.”
In Nairobi, D.S. Njoroge also brought some of the biggest LIVE acts to the city and the country. The then Zaire Congolese regional sensation Kanda Bongo Man performed at Nyayo Stadium in the early 1990s, before being promptly deported.
Musyoka also credits the program URTNA on VoK, which then became KBC (the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation), for bringing a medley of melody to us: “English music, francophone music, Lingala, and South African music; it really brought a variety of voices to its viewers; and that was how Kenyans eventually got to know legends like Brenda Fassie.”
Legendary Kenyan producer Eric Musyoka aka Musyox, during an interview at his studio along Kiambu Road in Nairobi on February 27, 2024.
Photo credit: Wilfred Nyangaresi | Nation
But as a child, little Eric Musyoka was more interested in the process of creating sound, inspired by his dad who was a guitarist; but without the requisite skills to play stringy instruments, he took to the lower hanging fruit of drumming.
It’s like the tale of the Foo-Fighters’ rock star, David Grohl, who says back in 1976, when he was just seven, a cousin gave him a copy of Canadian progressive-rockers Rush’s album “2112.”
Grohl immediately begin teaching himself to imitate the Rash drum set, using the furniture in his room as a crude approximation of a drum kit. His mother Virginia Grohl recalls the “Thump-thwack-thump thwack” coming out from his bedroom, and says it was soon as natural to her as bird song, and scarcely more intrusive.”
“That kind of exposure at the early age sparks up the thought of one as an instrumentalist perhaps even as a performer,” Eric Musyoka says of his foray with drums as a young boy.
At some point, soon after, the Musyoka family moved from Masaku to Nairobi, and Eric found himself at Riara school, which he says was “some severe sort of culture shock.”
“Before that, I was all about speaking Swahili and Kamba, and now, all of a sudden, I am in an all-English school, and listening to Bob Marley and Lucky Dube, and all sorts of Western songs too.”
Musyoka was also getting into all sorts of musical competitions in his new school and getting certificates. Being from a musical family, and also having learned to express himself musically, by high school he was participating in the Kenya Musical Festivals all the way to provincial level.
“At the time, I felt I had fikad (arrived) in the upper echelons of Kenyan musicality,” Syoks says with a chuckle.
Then he began associating with one of the school owner’s daughters, Suzanne Gachukia, who was already running a recording outfit called the “Samawati Studios.”
“She was recording Congolese artists,” Syoks says. “It was my first taste of recorded music – and I immersed myself fully in it. I was in my early teens, but already felt I had an entry point into the eco-system of professional music in Kenya.”
To upend KBC-TV, The Kenya Television Network (KTN) had come into the scene at the turn of the 1990s, and young television presenters like Jimmy Gathu were turning the tide of presentable music on TV.
Legendary Kenyan producer Eric Musyoka, alias Musyox during an interview at his studio along Kiambu Road, Nairobi on February 27, 2024.
Photo credit: Wilfred Nyangaresi | Nation
“Jimmy had different weekly entertainment shows like ‘Rap ’Em’, ‘Rastrat’, and of course ‘Jamadelic’. It was all a very exciting time, and we were massively influenced by ‘Biggy’ (the ‘Notorious’ B.I.G.) and Tupac Shakur. We wrote lyrics in our school notebooks, and banged our school desks as musical accompaniment.”
Having now become part of a rap group called “No-Noma” after meeting the messianic Tedd Josiah while still in school, and interacted with one Mohammed Ogari, as well as the Ambrose who would later run the studio ‘Mandugu Digital’ Musyoka came to the decision that he was more introverted.
“I didn’t so much want to perform as to be the man behind the glass,” he says.
Besides Samawati and Mandugu Digital, Sync Studios & Kelele Records were the other recording studios that Musyoka was acquainted with, as well as Polygram/Polydor whose doors were in the CBD in Nairobi, and open to all who could afford to record there; though as a world brand with a branch here, they more often were the selectors of a rare few, with contacts over rights between themselves and artists which led to clashes at times.
Eric Musyoka laments the “novice knowledge” amongst many local musicians on issues of copyright, catalogues, master-rights on who owns the music, “until you want to commercialise and capitalise, and some don’t realise that record labels are actually investors in musical talent; that a record label is a bank that ‘lends’ an artist money by playing a key role in developing your act, making the industry connections for them, producing and distributing the music for artists.”
Going guerrilla style by trying to run one’s self releases, without understanding the legal and marketing end of the industry; as Eric Musyoka admits: “when I began producing my first groups, I at first didn’t understand music as a 360- degree business industry.”
The case of “Malaika”, perhaps the world’s most famous Swahili song, is a case of a song that created a whole East African cottage industry in music, but there weren’t contracts, with neither the pioneer writer nor the now more famous recording artist of the song, Fadhili Williams, getting very little coin from a song that didn’t only become the cover hit of the Coast, the toast of E.A. radio stations, but made the charts in Europe and the juke-boxes of U.S.A.
In his own case, Eric Musyoka decided it best to go off to America and do a degree at a school of Musical Engineering before further pursuing his career as a producer and owner of recording studios, so that he learned about promotion, marketing and distribution, as well as successfully completing the technical end of it – music engineering.
“The studio is a small starting component of a larger model in the music industry,” says Musyoka. His popular break came with the P-Unit group in the 2000s, and even as from 2017, Musyoka has been producing musicians with his own renowned label called “Decimal Records.”
“I.T. was crude then, but technology has grown. The music space has been democratised. If one system fails (you), you use other references to adapt it to your own needs. The barriers to entry have been decimated by online’. The days of printing CDs then lobbying deejays to play them, say, on Homeboyz radio are over. That was a different era.” But the transition has also been a pretty nightmare. “If you blow up online, you can make a lot of money, but streaming has also meant a lot less shillings for musicians, overall.” ‘
On defining Kenyan sound, Decimal Records’ Eric Musyoka feels under no pressure to create “a Kenyan sound.” As with P-Unit, and other Decimal artistes, he says he just gravitates towards “a unique style,” and simplicity in the actual music.
He has no grand musical philosophy at Decimal. Musyoka does, however, acknowledge that there are still many challenges in enforcing copyright rules in the country, as we’ve seen in the inter-continental case of Fadhili Williams. The Decimal Records founder and director also acknowledges that lack of clear demarcation between who owns what within a production can bring serious (court) conflict, even with serious and experienced musicians like Nyashinski, this one being a conflict over master rights between musician and producer that has turned into a cross-continental court conflagration ...
“Sonic Nation: Sounds of Kenya” is the first of many initiatives spearheaded by the Recording Industry of Kenya (RIKE) aimed at building and strengthening Kenya’s recording industry.
“Beyond celebrating our culture and heritage,” said Sandra Chege, Arts Manager of the British Council at the launch, “it highlights the sector’s immense potential to shine on the global stage - if provided with solid structures, effective policies, government support and active collaboration among stakeholders.”
The project was actualised with the support of the British Council as part of the UK/Kenya Season of Culture 2025.
