A round-up of the artistic, sublime, ridiculous of 2022
From left: Lawyer-cum-socialite Corazon Kwamboka, Musician Mejja and the late Jackson Kibor.
As the year comes to a close, Tony Mochama takes a look at the people, creations and events that stood out on the cultural scene.
Rise of the ‘Manosphere’
In the first quarter of 2022, octogenarian Jackson Kibor, politician, polygamist and the chairman of the imaginary Men’s Conference passed away, and was mourned by some, particularly on social media, as a true “champion of the masculine Decalogue”.
This was because Mzee Kibor, in highly publicised divorces, had become an unlikely masculine model in how men can deal with “noisy and noxious wives” in the words of writer Silas Nyanchwani.
Two months later, lots of women on social media were celebrating the demise of Kevin Samuels, a black American influencer with millions of mostly male followers, whom they described as misogynoir.
In a world with women on the rise and a lot of men left floundering at the loss of traditional roles in society, some look up to men like Kibor and Kevin, and a few local Kenyan men are riding on this new “manosphere”. There is Amerix (Eric Amunga) on social media preaching take-no-prisoners masculinity; and the author Jacob Aliet, whose local best-seller Unplugged plugs off Kevin Samuel’s ideas to try and teach Kenyan men how to be red-pilled.
Socialite era in decline?
The year began with lawyer-cum-socialite Corazon Kwamboka breaking up with serial-marriage-man fitness instructor Frank “Just Gym It”, accusing him of mocking her clinical depression after childbirth.
In October, socialite Vera Sidika was trending on social media after she bemoaned the medical woes that had allegedly forced her to remove the implants that had enlarged her posterior to a gargantuan mass. It turned out she was lying to attract attention—chasing clout as it is referred to on social media—to some middling music video she was releasing.
Socialite Vera Sidika. Sidika was trending on social media after she bemoaned the medical woes that had allegedly forced her to remove the implants that had enlarged her posterior.
But after a decade of these social media shenanigans, with shorter attention spans among the youth for such antics, it seems like these are the last kicks of the fading socialite era in Kenya, thanks to things like Tik Tok.
Google and Tik Tok Think
In three short years that started with Covid-19 in early 2020, TikTok has become the most popular application on the planet – thanks to its easy-to-use creation tools (that make teenagers the stars of their own short videos to legally pre-licensed music, so why watch the Huddahs when you can make your own “star” moves), as well as an accumulative For You, Page with an algorithm that pops up your visual tastes.
That powerful search engine, Google, is also contributing to changes in the way we think, read and consume information by this twilight of 2022 – from being “deep thinkers” to being “power browsers” in a world of tags, sound bytes, quick clicks, clickbait and hyperlinks, that is reducing the ability of people to concentrate on longer reads and even reflection, as they stream in many snack-size info-bits into their brains.
Where we used to deep-dive into an ocean of words, as one writer put it, we now jet-ski on the surface – and with the triumph of the visual over the abstract lies a danger that the Internet, while aiding our knowledge accumulation, if not supplemented by deeper text reading, may be flattening intelligence
Vaida Omwana Inyanya
Harry Richie, a Luhya musician, made a video in the studio and sent it to be played at a wedding.
But Kenya’s TikTok tsarina Azziad Nasenya stumbled across it, started a dance challenge, and in no time Vaida reached 2.5 million YouTube views and 10 times that number on Tik Tok. The dance challenge even reached overseas.
It was the viral vernacular hit of 2022, and Harry said that Luhyas, who are often ridiculed for their unending quest for unity, celebrated the song beyond sub-tribe boundaries.
Coolio – C U When You Get There
Artis Ivey Junior, better known as Coolio – whose 1995 album Gangsta’s Paradise went double platinum, was the number one Billboard chart hit of that year across all genres and became an instant global classic – passed away in September.
He was the last of the American musicians whose style, including in clothing, would be aped here in the mid-1990s, as after that, hip-hop, basketball, baggy clothes and cool USA exploded with the 1998 Embassy bombing – and in came hair, tight-fit attire, local music (Hardstone, Ndaling P) and the English Premier League
Mejja, the major urban musician of the year
Mejja, the musician, continued on the comical, melodic roll he’s been on ever since Okwonkwo in 2020. The vocal oral cross-generational storyteller for millennials, “omokad” Generation Zs and still-with-it Generation Xers in Kenya. His top three singles this year had a cumulative 15 million views – KaNairo Dating (4.2 million), Karibu Kenya (5 million) and Usiniharibie Mood (4.8 million).
Musician Mejja. The musician continued on the comical, melodic roll he’s been on ever since Okwonkwo in 2020.
Salman Rushdie, and the self-publishing explosion in Kenya
A young man in New York called Hadi Matar plunged a knife into Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses (that got him a fatwa from Iran’s Ayatollah in 1989) in an attempt to murder him.
Rushdie lost an eye but is in no particular rush to die. But like the exiled Satan in his book, he may once more become a condemned vagabond, of no certain known abode, wandering the earth with no place to rest his hoof, or a safe roof over his head, for daring to express himself in literature.
Self-publishing, has become much cheaper, and caught on like a go-down on fire, and this book reviewer found himself being invited monthly to poetry or prose book launches – Silas Nyanchwani, poet Eudia Kamonjoh or Jacob Oketch, playwright Alex Nderitu, poet Don Ouma or writer Muthoni of AMKA.
Writing master classes, by hugely popular bloggers like Biko Zulu (and many others by literary frauds who will remain unnamed) also sprouted and flourished.
Rufftone and the crescendo of choirs in Kenya
As Rushdie was being rushed to hospital in New York, Rufftone was bringing the roof down at the Bomas National Tallying Centre with his perennial hit Mungu Baba Twakuomba, a welcome change to the “sio uchawi, ni maombi” triumphalist chants.
Then as chaos reigned, including an attempt to stop electoral commission chairman Wafula Chebukati from announcing the presidential election results at Bomas, the Mtakatifu Kizito Choir from Tanzania kept their eye on the ball—or rather the baton of the legendary conductor Mwalimu Thomas Wasonga, singing “twapenda amani, twapenda undugu, ulio hapa Kenya,” singing unceasingly as the chaos reached a crescendo all around them.
Songs and words of the year
Lero ni Lero by Emmanuel Musindi featuring none other than veteran politician and Azimio la Umoja One Kenya presidential candidate Raila Odinga was the instantly recognisable tune all across the nation this year.
Then there was Sipangwingwi by Exray Taniua, featuring Trio Mio and Ssaru, which was adopted by the President William Ruto campaign team, with lines like “mi sipangwingwi, kijana ni gwiji, utapangaje morio ana shilingi kwa wingi” (no-one controls me, a young man of knowledge, how will you control a man with a lot of money)?
Perhaps the phrase of the year was “hot air”, and it came from the Supreme Court in early September during the presidential petition judgement.
Former electoral commission vice-chairperson Julianna Cherera gave us perhaps what some could consider the word of the year: “opaque”. It means obscure and not lucid as per the complete Oxford Word Finder.
As for slang, it was Wakadinali’s most streamed song of 2022 that gave Kenyans the sheng phrase“Subaru ya Mamburu inakam na imejaa”.
The Woman King and Lupita Nyongo
Starring Viola Davis and based on the all-female Agojie warriors of the Dahomey empire of West Africa, The Woman King was made with $50 million and has grossed twice that worldwide.
Lupita Nyong’o made her love reveal, Selema Masekela, the 51-year-old son of South African musical legend, Hugh Masekela.
“We just clicked!” she said of the surfer-owner of the Alekesam brand – but some social media trolls made fun of his age and slight belly paunch, making one wonder if they expected the 39-year-old Oscar-winning actress to partner up with a 21-year old damsel instead.
Cancel Russian culture
Due to the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine that started on February 24, a serious “cancel Russia” movement sprang up, leading to Russian expulsion/cancellation from the Venice Biennale, Wimbledon, the hosting of the Champion’s League final, the forced sale of Chelsea Football Club by Roman Abramovich, no Russian art auctions in Sotheby’s or Formula One Grand Prix, banishing of abroad travel of the Bolshoi Ballet, and so on and so forth.
The Russians bombing of Ukraine’s Mariupol Drama Theatre, then hanging banners of faces of Pushkin, Tolstoy and Gogol, is a ghoulish act to try and superimpose Russian cultural superiority over others.
But doesn’t banning the reading of, say, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, just diminish literature, without affecting the gremlins in the Kremlin itself?
EABL turned 100, as Severin turned 50
East African Breweries Limited, the giant beer maker, became a century old in 2022, a hundred years after Charles Hurst founded a small brewery at the Rui rwa Aka (Ruaraka) river and named the first beer Tusker after a male elephant killed his pachyderm hunting brother, Geoff – thus unwittingly immortalising its tusks, its victim and elephant head imprint on our most popular brown bottle over the last century.
Mombasa’s oldest same-owned hotel, Severin Sea Lodge, also turned fifty this year – with Them Mushrooms legend Teddy Kalanda Harrison, in a wheel-chair but still singing, revealing that it was while “at Severin Sea Lodge, enjoying the sea breeze, that the globally popular tourist song Hakuna Matata came to him,” as if in a dream.
Social media drama over Samidoh
2022 began with UDA politician Karen Nyamu boasting about getting a daughter with married (to Edday Nderitu) mugithi musician Samidoh, their second child from their extra-marital affair. It ended with now Senator Nyamu causing trouble during his show in Dubai, and a video going viral as his security dragged her away.
Singer Samidoh, his wife Edday Nderitu and nominated Senator Karen Nyamu.
After “entertaining” Kenyans on social media with all her “Baby Mama drama” all year, the UDA disciplinary committee called in the nominated Senator, who emerged from the session to break up with Samidoh, probably to his relief.
Governor Sakaja and Riggy G
Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua may have had a video go viral on how he would talk to Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja not to interfere with business people from Central Kenya, but the governor had a great cultural week when he premiered the Nairobi Festival at Uhuru Recreational Park – as did Culture Cabinet Secretary Ababu Namwamba with his Creative Summit at the Kenya National Theatre.
DP Gachagua also gave a job in his office to Ivy Chelimo, the millennial who nicknamed him “Riggy G” on Twitter.
The FIFA Qatar World Cup of 2022
It may have started off with colourful storms in beer kegs, that Qatar had banned alcohol and homosexuals from the global football fiesta. But as the weeks went on, the main story became all about the Atlas Lions of Morocco – and heroes like Ziyech, Hakimi, Boufal and Amrabat – who battered and battled their way through Belgium, Spain and Portugal to take Africa to the World Cup semi-finals for the first time.
Argentina's forward #10 Lionel Messi lifts the World Cup trophy during the Qatar 2022 World Cup trophy ceremony on December 18, 2022.
In the end, in an epic clash against 2018 champions France (starring Mbappe), it was Argentina under the iconic leadership of Lionel Messi who lifted the 2022 World Cup – and finally settled the question – who between Messi and (crying) Cristiano Ronaldo – is the Greatest football player of their generation.
The GOAT of all time in ‘o jogo bonito,’ as Pele dabbed the beautiful game of football, is Pele himself – the only human to have won three World Cup trophies (1958, 1962, 1970) and popularised ‘soccer’ in inward-looking America (with its odd sports) – who passed away in the twilight of this crazy year – enjoying extra-time in life only long enough for the World Cup to end, congratulate Lionel Messi from his death-bed, enjoy Christmas with his family; then get off the field as the Grim Reaper blew his final whistle.
Death of icons
On December 10, news broke of the death of Tshala Muana, aka ‘Mama Nacional,’ the Congolese music icon whose music and sensual dance style remain popular in Kenya.
Twenty days later, it was Kenyan TV icon Catherine Kasavuli, who passed off the scene with cervical cancer. The Nairobi West girl joined the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation as a teenager and became a pioneer figure on KTN in 1990 – attracting as much attention for her charming looks as she did for her flawless delivery of news. She was part of the team that changed the course of Kenya’s broadcasting, spurring the first private television station. A consummate professional, and sweet, charming person, she moved to Citizen TV in 2007, then KBC TV two years ago, as her life went full circle.
