Kenyan Reggae Scene - Back In The Day!

"Poh! Poh! Poh! Poh! come again man selector!!" exclaims MC Sugar D requesting Papa Charlie to repeat the song. Promptly as if on cue, Papa Charlie instantly repeats the song and introducing it like: "YES!!! Introducing man like Peter Broggs; a musical team called Doggy In The Window". Elated revellers, yours truly included shout back: "Yeah man! Jah Rastafari" then we quickly proceeded to "ngota" (greet by gently knocking each others fists) each other and raise our fists in the air like they reportedly do in Zion. The year was 2002, the day as always was on a Saturday and club Monte Carlo was the venue. The resident Reggae entertainment sound was King Lions Sound led by Papa Charlie and his brother King Tubbs having taken over from their late brother: Papa Lefty - May he R.I.P. The MCs AKA noise makers are not worth mentioning because they weren't my favourites; they always found ways to unnecessarily interrupt good songs in their fake Jamaican Patois slang. For instance: rare songs like the aforementioned songs were a preserve of King Lion Sounds. It was rumoured that if Papa Charlie came across a rare reggae album, he'd promptly buy all the copies from the shelves so that all roots reggae fans knew if you want to listen to rare songs, club Monte Carlo was the place to be. This explains the numerous interruptions that were aimed at ensuring no "clean copy" record of the song existed in the market - Must have been their idea of patenting. So you know, phrases like "a musical team called" funnily meant "a song called".... "wheel an' come" meant "Pause and repeat". Later on some stoned MCs would go like: "Yes I!! Man selector!! When the music is nice, you place it twice and when the music is sweet, you go for an instant repeat" ....utter nonsense!!

Club Monte Carlo

By the then standards, Monte Carlo was a dingy club. That's notwithstanding, we religiously filled the joint to capacity to an extent that Noah and his arc must have been envious. Wooden chairs would be arranged along the walls to create enough dance floor space for all. Entry was a painful Ksh100 which meant that if you had Ksh500 your weekend promised to happen. The revellers were characterised as follows: 90% were clad in Safari boots and tight jeans trousers, 90% chewed khat you'd be forgiven to think it was Bob Marley's staple diet, Out of the 90% chewing khat, 5% washed it down with an occasional beer that often got flat thanks to hours of holding onto the bottle, 75% of them clutched onto soda bottles that had a hole on the bottle top to limit the consumption of the contents both by mouth and err-mm evaporation and the remaining 10% painfully swallowed saliva to relief the choking effect of Khat.. LOL!! 50% would be in shabby hair coiled out to pass as dreadlocks, 2% comprised of Kenyan rasta men who mostly hawked rasta paraphernalia painted in true colours - Red, Gold and Green. The list is endless; but the crowd was quite fascinating especially to a first time visitor. Notably, most of the dread-locked rasta men hardly danced, they just sat down and reasoned - at this point it's important to note that Rasta men don't discuss with each other, they "reason" with each other.

Massive an' Crew

Most revellers came as a group from different hoods. The most notorious of these hailed from City Council estates like Ziwani, Kaloleni, Jericho, Bahati, etc.. Why such groupings were and still are referred to as "massive and crew" on the Kenyan reggae scene still baffles me to this day. Massive and crew were famous for all the wrong reasons: from commuting for free to town, smoking joints openly, spoiling for fights on the dance floors, openly teasing ladies that accompanied "mababi" (uptown wimps) to the club, scaring well-muscled security men - yaani bouncers and causing terror and running battles in the streets of Accra road and Tom Mboya in the morning after the reggae sessions. As gloomy as it may sound, we loved reggae music. That explains why we thronged reggae clubs religiously despite all; it was a sacrifice man!! Back then, yours truly resided in Buru Buru estate which was conveniently tagged "mtaa ya mababi" meaning an estate for the affluent. To survive at club Monte Carlo, I had to make friends each Saturday with a few lads from the massive and crew that appeared formidable on that day. Believe it or not, such temporary friendships were purely for "protection" and just like in NatGeo Wild, they involved some "dating rituals" of sorts. For instance, I wasn't a smoker but I would buy one or two cigarettes, light one periodically; I'd take short unconvincing draws as I struggled to stifle my rookie coughs, then I'd gladly pass it on to the nearest tough-looking member of say the Umoja Renegades massive and crew. Such an act would be met by suspicious looks but would immediately be followed by Rasta salutations: "Irie!!!" or "ngotaaa!!" and then we'd bang the tightly clenched fists on our chests with thud as if we were trying to kill ourselves. On a bad day, I'd have to throw in a soda or a beer, albeit grudgingly to win their trust.

Pon The Dancefloor

Unlike my currently unfit self, back in the day I was young and agile. Urged by the punch of the beat that is characterized by reggae music, I used to dance myself silly; all night long. In the event of unfamiliar songs, yours truly was still unfazed. My strategy was fake as you shake it - I was known to mumble along to unfamiliar songs and occasionally throw in one or two Kiembu words pronounced in heavy Jamaican slang to the admiration of other revellers. Allow me to explain, for some reason, most ardent reggae fans in Kenya are of Luo and Luhya backgrounds and can barely distinguish Embu language from deep Jamaican Patois if you sing along confidently. I'm not flossing, but my knowledge of reggae music goes deeper than the "anthems" that average DJs played and continue to play in clubs and mixes. Anthems are overplayed songs in reggae albums by lazy DJs who overlook all the other songs in a certain album and decide to popularize specific songs. To my chagrin, 90% of the time Papa Charlie played anthems, but who cared, the crowd loved them. Most popular anthems had everyone rising from the seats and the revellers already on the dance-floor jumping higher with their fists and fingers pointed upwards towards "Zion" as they chanted: "Meeeesssssaaaaggggeeee!!!" referring to the "consciousness" of the lyrics. It's at this stage that pickpockets had a field day on the mostly empty pockets of the stoned dancing youths. I must mention that whether or not you had a joint rolled, you were equally high thanks to the secondary smoke; which in this case contained additives like bad breath, khat fumes, njugu karanga and cheap liquor. Most fights broke out at this stage; for reasons as flimsy as someone accidentally stamping at another's foot or spilling a drink - regardless of the fact that most drinks had holes on the bottle tops and minimal liquid leaked because broke reggae youths have a very high reflex for rescuing spilling drinks.

The paradox of a great deal of reggae fans world over is that they talk of reggae music having a societal message of peace, love and unity; yet they themselves are the most violent. This violence escalates during reggae concerts, at least going by the ones I have attended so far. Ahem! so we'd rock the night away as we trampled on the filthy floor thanks to khat twigs, chewing gums and peanuts remnants. It was trendy to carry small notebooks that we used to write song and big up requests and hand them over to the MC. Shortly after, the MC would interrupt the music flow and go like: "Big up to all Jericho youths, Kaloleni massive and the Umoja renegades" and all the stoned youths from the respective hoods would shout: "Yeeeeeesssssss!!! Rastafari", while looking at the ceiling as if His Imperial Majesty Haille Sellasie the First had just appeared in the clouds to redeem all rasta folk, LOL!! My highlight however, was when the DJ played a rare song that wasn't an anthem hence unknown to 90% of the revellers. It was my time to take over the dance floor; see, most people retreated to the vacant seats when unfamiliar songs played. That means I had half the dance floor to myself. Oh my!! Didn't I enjoy!! I jumped up and down rhythmically like the cock of the walk. The advantage of having arrived from the village a year earlier meant that I could blend some village dance moves and urban moves to achieve some real wicked moves. All this while, I bellowed like a bull, on top of my lungs letting everyone who cared know that I was the man of the moment... yule mziii!!! The fact that my antics won me lots of admiration from the damsels present is an understatement; notwithstanding whom they came with. One such damsel someday, caught by the rhythm arrest and finding the hunk that I was back then irresistible joined me on the dance floor, what happened next will probably make the contents of my next blog... Gotta mention though that her boyfriend belonged to one of the most intimidating massive and crews and he was present; shock on me!!!

In conclusion, the local reggae scene then was both vibrant and chaotic. Present day riddims were non-existent and we all pretended to be the most conscious people in the world. I went on to attend many reggae concerts featuring artists like: Culture, Burning spear, Luciano, Morgan Heritage, Black Uhuru, Richie Spice, Turbulence, etc... I had to quit though especially after attending the last of a free Don Carlos concert at Kasarani that had the most violent fans I have ever encountered.. wasee wa ngeta bana; Mchana tenaaa!! The most fascinating thing about clubs like Monte Carlo and Hollywood back in the day was that, the management had conveniently placed a nail on the counter for the "masufferer" youths to pierce a hole on soda and beer bottles to ensure the contents lasted the whole night if possible - Such a self-defeating move that made zero business sense. No wonder most such clubs got run down eventually. BOLLOCKS!!!

Wait... I forgot to add that after such nights of indulgence and dancing for 6 hours continuously, I always wondered why other passengers in Buru Buru bound route 23 matatus' always avoided seating next to me until some inebriated fellow sat next to me, promptly held onto his nose and exclaimed: "Na unanuka jasho joh!" meaning: "man! you reek of sweat!". Hehe!! I honestly miss those days :)