Bitter rivalry and backstabbing in Kenyan gospel

If you call a mobile phone belonging to a Kenyan chances are the owner has downloaded a gospel song by a local singer as their callback tone. Kenyan gospel is now so popular that the country’s first TV station dedicated to local gospel music was launched in July. Gospel has grown into a multi-billion industry with fierce competition between artists for a slice of that cake.

As the popularity of gospel music in Kenya rises, the line between it and secular music becomes increasingly blurred. Some gospel artists have really pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable by adopting an image that leaves many fans confused about their belief in the Christian values they sing.

Some critics are of the view that Kenyan gospel cannot be considered a genre but rather, different styles of music whose only common link is in the lyrics that make reference to spirituality. The gospel songs are essentially modeled either on South African rhythms or Jamaican reggae/dancehall, or American Hip-hop or Congolese ‘soukous’.

A Kenyan ethnomusicologist Jean Kidula says Christian music in Kenya defies definition and that the only common factor is when the lyrics are in any way related to the Bible, or if the musicians claim to be Christians.

It used to be that “Christian music”, as it was then known, was sedate spiritual music often performed by church choirs and only played during religious occasions. Few, if any, were ever released commercially. There was a gradual change in the late 1980s as the first Gospel music show, Sing and Shine, was launched on Kenyan television and the image of singers changed from the robed choirs to trendy looking performers.

A singer who launched her career on this TV show while still a high school student would a few years later be at the very heart of the gospel revolution in Kenya. Esther Wahome’s single ‘Kuna Dawa’, hit the half a million sales mark in 2004, a record by any standards in Kenyan music, thrusting gospel music right into the mainstream. With its lively rhythm and a catchy chorus that exhorts people to give up their lives to Jesus, ‘Kuna Dawa’ was played in pubs, discos and other social places previously considered taboo for gospel.

Speaking about the impact of the song in a 2011 interview, Wahome said: “The purpose of my music is to set the captives free, so if a drunken man wants to sing along, let him, it shall be embedded in his mind and soon he will seek that dawa (medicine) that he constantly sings about loudly with his friends making merry.”

Her good looks and celebrity status made Wahome an advertiser’s dream and she was the subject of controversy when she signed a deal with East African Breweries, even though it involved endorsing a non-alcoholic beverage. Even politicians caught on to the wave of ‘Kuna Dawa’ when it was used as a campaign song during the 2005 referendum campaigns for a new Kenyan constitution.

The emergence of a second generation of contemporary gospel artists in Kenya has led to even more fierce competition and, in the process, some bitter disputes have dominated the media. Since 2013, there has been a high-profile feud (“beef” in the language of the gossip columnists) between two young performers, Willy Paul and Kevin Bahati, who both command a huge following. Bahati lit the fire when he accused his rival of stealing his music by bribing his (Bahati’s) producers to gain access to songs that he then recorded as his own.

The rivalry has spread to the annual gospel music industry honours, the Groove Awards. Both Paul and Bahati succeeded each other in winning the Male Artist of the year award in 2013 and 2014 and, just like other performers, have used the event whose winners are voted by the public, as a popularity contest. The organisers of the 2015 Awards used the event as a reconciliation platform to end the feud between the two performers but the truce did not last long. Paul stormed out of the event in a huff after watching his rival beat him to all the major honours of the ceremony, including the Male Artist of the Year Award.

In recent years even these awards have been dogged by complaints from some artists who claim that only those who belong to certain camps end up as winners. Though no evidence has been presented to support these allegations, such claims point to the suspicion and mistrust among gospel artists.

When he appeared as a guest presenter at the 10th Groove Awards in 2015, the outspoken rapper Octopizzo used the stage to warn gospel artists who are showing a bad example to their fans: “Don’t mislead people in the gospel circuit. My kids watch you and if you mislead them, I will come for you.”

If there is a group of Kenyan musicians that is caught in an identity crisis, then it is most of those who today profess to be gospel artists. There are valid questions about their belief in the very foundations on which gospel music is built.

Originally published on 17 July 2015 in This Is Africa