Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Kenya Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
He wrote and recorded Malaika, the most widely known song ever to come out of East Africa — and got very little of the money.
Fadhili William Mdawida was a Taita musician from Taveta who recorded with the Jambo Boys and then the Equator Sound Band in Nairobi in the late 1950s and 1960s.
Malaika — angel — was recorded in 1960. It is a simple song about a man who cannot marry the woman he loves because he has no money, sung in Swahili to a gently swung guitar figure, and it became the most recorded and most widely known song East Africa has produced. Miriam Makeba took it around the world, Harry Belafonte, Boney M., Angélique Kidjo, Pete Seeger and Rocket Juice among many others recorded it, and it is sung at weddings and funerals from Mombasa to Kinshasa.
Authorship has been disputed for sixty years — claims have been made for Adam Salim and for Grant Charo, and Fadhili William maintained to the end that he wrote it. What is not disputed is that the man who recorded it earned almost nothing from it: the royalties went elsewhere, the copyright position was never resolved, and he died in Nairobi in 2001 in poverty while his song played everywhere.
Malaika — angel — was recorded in 1960. It is a simple song about a man who cannot marry the woman he loves because he has no money, sung in Swahili to a gently swung guitar figure, and it became the most recorded and most widely known song East Africa has produced. Miriam Makeba took it around the world, Harry Belafonte, Boney M., Angélique Kidjo, Pete Seeger and Rocket Juice among many others recorded it, and it is sung at weddings and funerals from Mombasa to Kinshasa.
Authorship has been disputed for sixty years — claims have been made for Adam Salim and for Grant Charo, and Fadhili William maintained to the end that he wrote it. What is not disputed is that the man who recorded it earned almost nothing from it: the royalties went elsewhere, the copyright position was never resolved, and he died in Nairobi in 2001 in poverty while his song played everywhere.
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