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The cultural dose: Ayub Ogada – Kothbiro

Samson:

Well dear readers, something exciting is happening.  I’ve been approached by a band of hardy adventurers in search of a long lost artifact.  No joke.  I’ve decided to help them on their 2 month expedition.  If all goes well, we should be able to recover it by the holidays so I’ll be back then!  They won’t say what it is, apparently it’s super secret but my services are needed as an anthropologist to navigate through the local customs and pick up the language.  It’s kinda hard to do when they don’t say where we’re going so I told them off and questioned their sanity.  However, the promise of money and a gun in my face was quite convincing so here I am, packing for the unknown.

In the mean time, I leave you with a little cultural dose.  The music of Ayub Ogada.  The track is called “Kothbiro.”  And I must say, it really calms my nerves.  There’s something so serene about it.  There’s nothing like music to strike a mood and his really hit home specially if you’re going for that smooth calm feeling.  Here’s a youtube video of his music.  Yes, the visuals are a bit politicized but I’m not going to talk about that right now.  Just listen to the music.

Ayub Ogada is a Kenyan musician who is most famous for playing an east African stringed instrument called the nyatiti.  If you’re curious of what it looks like, he’s holding the instrument in the picture above.  Also skilled with the djembe drum, he played music for several years in Africa before deciding to go to London.  There, he performed the streets before making it big, so to speak, and recorded the album En Mana Kuoyo.  His music has been heard on several soundtracks.  In 2007, he moved back to Kenya and has been there since.

Please visit him on MySpace:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=54796111