From near-failure to boom: How streaming revived a Kenyan artist’s career

“I had all but given up and had returned to my rural home when a week later I got the news that my second EP Jenesis had been considered for a Grammy nomination in the Behind the Record Initiative,” the Kenyan artist tells Music In Africa.

“I really thought Jenesis was my last music project. My mind was set on farming and running a village barber shop, but as it turned out, the EP revived my career. Now I am enjoying what I'm doing and I can see money coming in.”

And just as well, with many people having questioned how he hoped to conquer the rap game outside Nairobi, or Mombasa for that matter.

As an artist largely operating at the periphery of local industry standards, his gradual transformation from an unknown act into one of the most streamed musicians in the country on Boomplay says a lot about staying true to the cause.

With two EPs – Mpito and Jenesis – and a number of singles under his belt, Gabiro Mtu Necessary looks to have struck paydirt on the Africa-facing music service. His debut album, Saint John, which came out on 29 April is almost hitting the 500 000-stream mark, while his previous releases have racked up over 1.3 million streams in the short time he has been on the platform.

Born Gabriel Washington Ogonda, those familiar with Gabiro Mtu Necessary most likely know him as a rapper from Kisumu. Just so you know, he is also an actor, dancer and songwriter.

Kisumu, a balmy city on Lake Victoria, is considered the spiritual home of ohangla, a heady mix of traditional Luo music blended with modern sounds whose purveyors are treated like mini gods across the entire western Kenya. It is these masters that fed Gabiro's hunger for music and storytelling.

So how did a boy who has worked with ohangla royalty like Musa Jakadala and Lady Maureen transition to a hip hop artist? “Although I majorly express myself in rap, I am an all-round musician first. I started out as a drummer before I began singing and writing music,” he offers.

Indeed, using a stripped-down ohangla rhythmic unit as the base for his rap compositions, he has been able to tell stories as well as other famous Luo griots.

It is, perhaps, in recognition of these diverse abilities that he was recently admitted into the Recording Academy as a voting member.

Still the big question remains how did Boomplay come to be his biggest fan platform? “It is hard to tell but I can assure you the growth was as organic as it can get,” Gabiro says. “And thankfully what is happening on Boomplay is helping slowly my base on other platforms especially YouTube as I can now afford to shoot a few quality videos.”

In a recent interview with Music In Africa, Boomplay East Africa managing director Martha Huro talked about how streaming platforms are shaking up the music landscape by giving outlying artists an equal shot at success. Could Gabiro’s case be an indicator of this? Maybe. But if there is anything to be learned from his gradual growth, and near failure, music has more to do with quality than locality.

What, then, is next for the Maseno University computer science graduate-turned-musician? “I recently launched my recording studio under the imprint Jodifa Enterprises and I am planning to bring up a set of new artists that I will work closely with to help them unlock their talents and show our region also has a huge creative potential.”