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 launched City Sounds in 1968 and out of it came Kikuyu benga — the music of an entire region, and songs that talked back to two presidents.
Joseph Kamaru wa Wanjiru was born at Kangema in Murang'a, worked as a houseboy and a driver in Nairobi, and started recording in the mid-1960s. His City Sounds label and band turned benga — the guitar-led dance music that came out of Luo Nyanza — into something Kikuyu-speaking Kenya made its own, and he became the dominant popular musician of central Kenya for four decades.
What distinguishes him is that he used it. He sang in praise of Jomo Kenyatta and then, after Kenyatta's death, recorded songs critical enough of Daniel arap Moi's government that they were banned from the Voice of Kenya and he was harassed for them — most famously a song about corruption and one about the murder of the foreign minister Robert Ouko. Very few Kenyan musicians took that risk in the 1980s and none with his audience.
He recorded more than a thousand songs. In the late 1980s he had a religious conversion, destroyed a large part of his own back catalogue as sinful, and spent years recording gospel instead, before returning to secular music later. He died in 2018.
What distinguishes him is that he used it. He sang in praise of Jomo Kenyatta and then, after Kenyatta's death, recorded songs critical enough of Daniel arap Moi's government that they were banned from the Voice of Kenya and he was harassed for them — most famously a song about corruption and one about the murder of the foreign minister Robert Ouko. Very few Kenyan musicians took that risk in the 1980s and none with his audience.
He recorded more than a thousand songs. In the late 1980s he had a religious conversion, destroyed a large part of his own back catalogue as sinful, and spent years recording gospel instead, before returning to secular music later. He died in 2018.
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