France confers arts order on Kenyan music producer Tabu Osusa

The ambassador of France to Kenya and Somalia, Aline Kuster-Menager, conferred the distinction on Osusa at a ceremony at Alliance Francaise in Nairobi on 16 July. The order is one of the highest decorations awarded by the French government and was established in 1957 by the then French minister of culture. It is awarded to artists and writers who have “distinguished themselves in the domain of artistic or literary creation or for the contribution they have made to art and literature in France and the world.”

“I am thankful to the French government for this recognition,” Osusa told Music In Africa. “We must tell our stories and champion our cultures and music both at home and abroad. That is the only way we will contribute to the cultures of the world, as opposed to trying to do poor imitations of other people’s cultures. Whatever we do, even if we borrow from others, let it be grounded in the richness of our histories, because people appreciate sincere cultural expression, language barriers notwithstanding.”

Osusa is one of the five music rights champions of the International Music Council and a member of the Visa For Music consultative committee in Morocco. He is a judge at the All Africa Music Awards and a founding member of Equation Musique, a programme initiated by the French Institute in 2008 that supports and brings together music professionals from the Southern Hemisphere. He is also the co-founder and coordinator of the Singing Wells project, which records and archives traditional sounds and music in East Africa.

In 2014, he was appointed by the Smithsonian Institute to curate the music showcased at the Kenyan stand at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. Some of his music productions include Spotlight on Kenyan Music, whose goal was to discover and promote young talent in his home country, as well as Muziki wa Kenya, a series of concerts supported by Goethe-Institut to showcase indigenous Kenyan music. His latest project is Shades of Benga: The Story of Popular Music In Kenya 1946-2016 – a book published in 2017 that traces the origins of Kenya’s popular music from the end of World War II to the present.