Post by Admin on Dec 1, 2011 20:01:15 GMT -5
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[glow=red,2,300]How to tell your Benga from Rumba[/glow]
Musa Juma entertains fans at a past concert. It is because the origins of benga are traced to Nyanza Province that there is a common belief that all popular Luo music is benga. Ironically, benga music is today more popular outside its cradle, Nyanza. Photo/JACOB OWITI
Musa Juma, who passed away a few months ago , was a great Kenyan musician, and there is no doubt about that. But was he a benga or rumba star?
Huge loss for rumba fans as Limpopo star takes final bow
It turns out that most ordinary mortals could not tell between benga, which is Kenyan, and rumba, which has Congolese roots – and media reports did not help much.
During an interlude in a rare performance in Nairobi last weekend, renowned Kenyan nyatiti player Ayub Ogada spoke about the origin of the name benga. He said the word benga was derived from Obengo, the name of the mother of the legendary musician D.O. Misiani.
A few people in the audience, including veteran music producer Tabu Osusa, exchanged knowing glances, fully aware of this oft-repeated fable.
The origin of the word benga remains a matter for conjecture even though, unlike rumba, the founding fathers of benga are still alive today.
Much of the credit for the benga sound goes to pioneer guitarist John Ogara, who shaped it in the early 1960s, fusing its rural roots with elements from urban centres.
The first use of the word benga in any recording was in 1963 in a song called Monica Ondego by The Ogara Boys. Ochieng Nelly, who played with Ogara, says the word was brought back to Kenya by the Luos who travelled to Congo in the 1950s. Others say the word refers to a popular skirt at the time, which was also known as the “Ogara skirt.”
Whatever the case may be, Osusa — whose work in the documentary Retracing the Benga Rhythm provides the most extensive research on this genre of music — says the name benga cannot be linked with D.O. Misiani because he was still in his birthplace in Shirati, Tanzania, at the time Ogara co-recorded the first benga songs.
Ogara experimented with other genres and was deeply influenced by rumba, which had found its way to East Africa through musicians like pioneering Congolese guitarist Jean Bosco Mwenda and his cousin, Edward Masengo. The two lived in Kenya in the late 1950s and early 60s.
Just what distinguishes benga from other genres of popular East African music, like the Congolese rumba?
The 1960s and early 1970s was a period of transition in East African music. The National Service radio was awash with the slow tempo Congolese rumba while the fast-paced sound of benga was limited to the Vernacular Service.
The meeting of benga and rumba happened against a socio-economic backdrop. Benga was at the time regarded as a rural sound. Kenyan historian Atieno Odhiambo says by contrast, Congolese rumba and African twist was the entertainment for the emerging urban middle-class of the 1960s.
Benga musicians were thus compelled to flirt with rumba due to its easy recognition and the urban prestige associated with it.
Gary Stewart notes in Rumba on the River, a history of popular music in the two Congos, that the rumba sound became prominent at the end of the Second World War. It grew from the influence of imported Cuban records in Kinshasa as musicians abandoned traditional instruments for the acoustic guitars brought by Congolese sailors around 1914.
Benga moved from the shores of Lake Victoria in the 1950s when Luo musicians began adapting traditional dance rhythms of the nyatiti (lyre) and the orutu (fiddle) to the acoustic guitar.
The most distinctive benga sound is that of the bouncy finger-picking guitar technique, where the lead follows the track of the vocals.
Pioneer benga guitarists cultivated the technique from the nyatiti, where single notes would be plucked. This was unlike the Congolese rumba guitarists who ‘massage’ and strum the guitar. But the great Franco Luambo Makiadi, king of Congolese rumba, also used to pluck his guitar.
In Congo, the arrival of the electric guitar in the 1950s distinguished their sound from jazz and Latin bands. Joseph “Grand Kalle” Kabaseleh dominated the scene in Kinshasa and Brazaville with his African Jazz.
A decade later, a Kenyan musician’s love for rumba led him to adopt the stage name Kabaselleh, after the Congolese maestro. Ochieng’ Kabaselleh’s style was rooted in the slower rumba tempo.
By the 1970s, benga was attracting record buyers across the continent. Gabriel Omolo’s 1972 blockbuster hit, Lunch Time, sold well in West Africa. Retracing the Benga Rhythm talks of the music selling as far as Southern Africa. In Zimbabwe, it was called ‘kanindo,’ because the labels bore the name of preeminent benga producer Phares Oluoch Kanindo.
Here is a Youtube posting of Gabriel Omolo's "lunch Time" track that crossed all boundaries all the way to west Africa....
[glow=red,2,300]How to tell your Benga from Rumba[/glow]
Musa Juma entertains fans at a past concert. It is because the origins of benga are traced to Nyanza Province that there is a common belief that all popular Luo music is benga. Ironically, benga music is today more popular outside its cradle, Nyanza. Photo/JACOB OWITI
Musa Juma, who passed away a few months ago , was a great Kenyan musician, and there is no doubt about that. But was he a benga or rumba star?
Huge loss for rumba fans as Limpopo star takes final bow
It turns out that most ordinary mortals could not tell between benga, which is Kenyan, and rumba, which has Congolese roots – and media reports did not help much.
During an interlude in a rare performance in Nairobi last weekend, renowned Kenyan nyatiti player Ayub Ogada spoke about the origin of the name benga. He said the word benga was derived from Obengo, the name of the mother of the legendary musician D.O. Misiani.
A few people in the audience, including veteran music producer Tabu Osusa, exchanged knowing glances, fully aware of this oft-repeated fable.
The origin of the word benga remains a matter for conjecture even though, unlike rumba, the founding fathers of benga are still alive today.
Much of the credit for the benga sound goes to pioneer guitarist John Ogara, who shaped it in the early 1960s, fusing its rural roots with elements from urban centres.
The first use of the word benga in any recording was in 1963 in a song called Monica Ondego by The Ogara Boys. Ochieng Nelly, who played with Ogara, says the word was brought back to Kenya by the Luos who travelled to Congo in the 1950s. Others say the word refers to a popular skirt at the time, which was also known as the “Ogara skirt.”
Whatever the case may be, Osusa — whose work in the documentary Retracing the Benga Rhythm provides the most extensive research on this genre of music — says the name benga cannot be linked with D.O. Misiani because he was still in his birthplace in Shirati, Tanzania, at the time Ogara co-recorded the first benga songs.
Ogara experimented with other genres and was deeply influenced by rumba, which had found its way to East Africa through musicians like pioneering Congolese guitarist Jean Bosco Mwenda and his cousin, Edward Masengo. The two lived in Kenya in the late 1950s and early 60s.
Just what distinguishes benga from other genres of popular East African music, like the Congolese rumba?
The 1960s and early 1970s was a period of transition in East African music. The National Service radio was awash with the slow tempo Congolese rumba while the fast-paced sound of benga was limited to the Vernacular Service.
The meeting of benga and rumba happened against a socio-economic backdrop. Benga was at the time regarded as a rural sound. Kenyan historian Atieno Odhiambo says by contrast, Congolese rumba and African twist was the entertainment for the emerging urban middle-class of the 1960s.
Benga musicians were thus compelled to flirt with rumba due to its easy recognition and the urban prestige associated with it.
Gary Stewart notes in Rumba on the River, a history of popular music in the two Congos, that the rumba sound became prominent at the end of the Second World War. It grew from the influence of imported Cuban records in Kinshasa as musicians abandoned traditional instruments for the acoustic guitars brought by Congolese sailors around 1914.
Benga moved from the shores of Lake Victoria in the 1950s when Luo musicians began adapting traditional dance rhythms of the nyatiti (lyre) and the orutu (fiddle) to the acoustic guitar.
The most distinctive benga sound is that of the bouncy finger-picking guitar technique, where the lead follows the track of the vocals.
Pioneer benga guitarists cultivated the technique from the nyatiti, where single notes would be plucked. This was unlike the Congolese rumba guitarists who ‘massage’ and strum the guitar. But the great Franco Luambo Makiadi, king of Congolese rumba, also used to pluck his guitar.
In Congo, the arrival of the electric guitar in the 1950s distinguished their sound from jazz and Latin bands. Joseph “Grand Kalle” Kabaseleh dominated the scene in Kinshasa and Brazaville with his African Jazz.
A decade later, a Kenyan musician’s love for rumba led him to adopt the stage name Kabaselleh, after the Congolese maestro. Ochieng’ Kabaselleh’s style was rooted in the slower rumba tempo.
By the 1970s, benga was attracting record buyers across the continent. Gabriel Omolo’s 1972 blockbuster hit, Lunch Time, sold well in West Africa. Retracing the Benga Rhythm talks of the music selling as far as Southern Africa. In Zimbabwe, it was called ‘kanindo,’ because the labels bore the name of preeminent benga producer Phares Oluoch Kanindo.
Here is a Youtube posting of Gabriel Omolo's "lunch Time" track that crossed all boundaries all the way to west Africa....