A chart-topping radio cassette was playing last week and all the audience could do was gossip about it. On side A was Samuel Muchoki aka Samidoh. On side B was Karen Nyamu. One side had an apologetic man seeking to reset his relationship with his wife while on the other side was a woman who wanted to land a punch or two.
Samidoh must have wished this was a song, because then he could have easily wielded the shield of poetic licence and moved on. Or he could have wished this was a random kamukunji where Administration Police constables like him are sometimes allowed to lob teargas and disperse everyone to end all discussions on a choky note.
But these were blood-and-flesh issues that inspired torrents of words in blogs, hundreds of gossipy calls to radio stations and acres of opinions of social media timelines.
For a man who mostly sings about love, this must have been a rinsing of sorts. The adage says that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. It appears that the mantra might also be varied to mean that if you live by love lyrics you will be bogged down by relationships.
Many suspected that all along he had been singing about his real life hence were not surprised that his lyrics have just found a convergence point with him.
In May 2018, he released a hit song Niwe Ndarathimiirwo (You are My Blessed) in which he croons of a young beauty he loved but she was tricked by his very friend and got pregnant.
But the forgiving Samidoh sings of willingness to forget “the betrayal, get back together and hit out again to start a family and shame those who incited you against me on account of my skinny physique (for Samidoh has all along had the frame of a featherweight boxer) and prove to them you were my blessed”.
This had been preceded by a 2017 release Wendo Maguta (Oily Love) where he laments about fading love and where he finds himself just trailing a relationship he wishes to forget. He tells of how he wishes “that love was like gas which, once it is exhausted, a person just checks into a gas station and buys a refill”.
Samidoh would later release a song about Wendo na Urimu (Love and Stupidity) where he says some affairs are real foolishness where one partner loves but his or her affection is unreciprocated, especially the man realising that he got himself into a lifetime jail.
He confesses in the lyrics that “there is a girl too in my life that I got entangled with and the result was that I inconvenienced her but I hope she understands that I never meant it… It was my flesh that raced ahead of me.”
Samidoh was to immediately release another single Riari Itheru (It Was a Joke) where he says he never meant to marry again; it was only that his life entertained a bad dream. He laments that the particular relationship he is singing about was founded on raw fantasy where he presented himself as a wealthy man “but in real sense I got nothing”.
A man whose singles have the rare ability of instantly and becoming community anthems, Samidoh’s next stop was about a passionate fatherly counsel to a daughter extolling her to remain virtuous and pure.
The great climax of Samidoh the role model came in a media interview he gave on October 2020 where he pleaded with his fellow artistes to always aspire to remaining true to their relationships and endeavour to solemnise them so as to avoid promiscuity.
Incidentally, Samidoh had in 2017 released a single, Ndiri Mutwe Mwega (I Don’t Have a Straight Head) in which he lamented that getting into some relationships makes one have questions about the tightness of mental nuts.
