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“What then were we to do as writers?” Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe asks in his memoir There Was a Country, a personal recount of the Biafran war. What were the creatives to do – the writers, musicians, poets, painters – when the government’s chokehold on Kenyans was at its apotheosis, and the public, led by the inexorable Gen Zs, swarmed the streets in protest, fists aloft, heads held high, feet stumping hard on the ground, saying, “We’ve had enough!”

In Achebe’s account of the civil war of 1967 to 1970, pitting Nigeria against the secessionist eastern region of the country renamed Biafra, writer and poet Christopher Okigbo dropped the pen for the gun, losing his life in the fighting. A proponent of the political artist, Achebe writes that, like Okigbo, he believed that “art and community in Africa are clearly linked”, taking a stand against Prof. Ali Mazrui who in his 1971 novel The Trial of Christopher Okigbo accused Okigbo of “the offense of putting society before art in his scale of values”. Maintaining that politics was no place for the artist, Mazrui wrote, “No great artist has a right to carry patriotism to the extent of destroying his creative potential.”

But Kenyan artists would not stand on the sidelines as passive observers. Indeed, when the protests began on 18 June 2024, and multitudes of Gen Zs and Millennials thronged the streets with colourful placards, wild stomping feet, and enchanting music, there was art bouncing off the pavements and the walls. There is a moral consensus around the universal right to dissent, and no other demographic seems to understand this better than Kenyan artistes and creatives. The protests attracted Gen Zs and Millennials who are of the notion that creating art can be an act of resistance. 

In Kenya, there is historical precedent of oppressed people using the arts to spread messages of resistance. In the 1950s, author and publisher Gakaara Wa Wanjaũ is known to have been the composer of Mau Mau war songs that instiled hatred against the colonialists and exhorted loyalists to join the Mau Mau movement before it was too late. Gakaara was arrested on 20 October 1952 alongside other key Kenya African Union (KAU) leaders including the famous Kapenguria Six. Gakaara wrote song lyrics in Gĩkũyu that were used to pass on information and encourage the Agĩkũyũ to fight the colonialist in an organised manner and as a united force. He composed songs recounting Mau Mau exploits and experiences, recording the history of the struggle for independence for later generations. Upon realising the power his songs had in spreading the Mau Mau revolutionary message, the colonial government banned the hymn books that Gakaara had published, labelling him “The Chief Mau Mau Propagandist”.

In post–independence Kenya, in 1986, after the 1982 attempted coup against the Moi-led government, Luo Benga maestro Hajullas Nyapanji Ochieng, popularly known as Ochieng Kabaselleh, found himself behind bars at King’ong’o prison. Kabaselleh, who was at the time leading L’Orchestre Lunna Kidi band, was charged with subversion, specifically accused of being a member of the anti-government group known as Mwakenya because of his anti-government songs. Kabaselleh was released three years later in 1989 and soon composed the giant hit Jela, a love song dissimulating a political message. Kabaselleh sarcastically points out the vanity and futility of the government’s attempt to intimidate and silence him with a prison sentence, singing, 

Kabaselleh nyocha osetwe macha wang’ni orumo te
Wan ma ti wadong’ e Kenya weche beyo ndi
Kabaselleh has been arrested he’s now done 
Kenya is now ours so things are good. 

Yawa an gima anyisou ni jogo ofuwo ndi
Jela nogo no kata ube ung’eyo ni jela simba yawuoyi
But I’m telling you these people are stupid
You all know prison is just a boys’ hut

In the song’s postlude, Kabasele comforts his audience and expresses his hope of a better future for the country. He solemnly sings, “Mbuta chieng nogo nwahciew gi hawi”, which loosely translates to “One day we will wake up with luck”.

Similarly, during the recent protests in Kenya, creatives seem to have adopted identities prompted by the political awakening taking place in the nation. They have curated representational projects of the protests through interactions with those alongside whom they protested. This has resulted in displays of creativity that is informed by the ongoing discourse that is calling for good governance and accountability on the part of the regime in place. Art has played a key role in defining the ongoing fight against injustice, the struggle for equality, and the desire for good leadership that young Kenyans are demanding.

One creative who has used his art to express dissent is the Afro swing and hip pop artist Sabi Wu. His song Reject Hio Bill – interpolated from Kendrick Lamar’s hyphy-influenced hip hop song Not Like Us – has become a soundtrack to the protests. Kendrick Lamar, an American artist known to be a purveyor of conscious hip hop, has widely inspired Kenyan Gen Z musicians to take up this genre that is characterised with promoting Afrocentricity and awareness of socio-political, economic and cultural issues. A subgenre of hip hop, conscious hip hop – also known as conscious rap – challenges the dominant cultural, social, political, sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic consensus. Apart from Sabi Wu, other Kenyan Gen Z music acts have also interpolated Kendric Lamar’s songs and released music that encourages achieving insights at an individual level that could lead to collective positive political change. They include the Nairobi-based group Movaz Warombosaji Nation who have released a single also titled Reject Hio Bill.

Alongside these artists who are interpolating and sampling the popular conscious rap emcee to make protest music are local inner – city Nairobi artists who are using the uniquely Kenyan genre, Gengetone, to create music that captures the aura surrounding the current state of the nation. Gengetone is characterised by Genge-rap blended with hints of dancehall and reggae tone and topped off with unfiltered and unrestrained lyrical expression. This aesthetic, coupled with the belligerent energy that Gengetone songs are usually associated with, is what has resulted in a Gengetone song becoming the foremost soundtrack to the Gen Z’s rallying cries against punitive government policies.

Anguka Nayo by Wadagliz KE, a duo from the Eastlands neighbourhood of Nairobi that is known to be a hotbed of rap talent, has become the anthem for the protests, with the phrase “Anguka Nayo” being adopted as the new lexicon expressing the dissent. The song has garnered over seven million views since it was uploaded on YouTube, an earworm for the protesting Gen Zs. The song’s popularity lies in the rawness of the music video, a low-budget production that showcases a dance style that draws a thin line between acrobatics and comedy. The dance style has gone viral, especially on TikTok where a TikTok challenge has been conceptualised. And as happens with any concept that depicts a nonviolent action by a group of people demanding equality and justice, the virality of this conceptualised challenge has been notable. The Anguka Nayo dance has been performed in places far beyond the Kenyan borders, such as at an NBC Universal event in Los Angeles, and on Times Square in New York. Even members of President Ruto’s recently fired cabinet were seen participating in the challenge. Kenyan artists have designed a logo that depicts a young man in the signature Anguka Nayo posture.

Musicians are not the only creatives creating works that respond to the current political climate. Other creatives, such as award-winning spoken word poet and storyteller Ngartia Kimathi, have curated art that challenges the status quo and gives voice to the Gen Z revolution. In his most recent multifaceted live performance, Dai Verse, Ngartia uses the theatrical form of call-and-response, a widespread pattern of democratic participation. The performer calls out to the audience, his “calls” punctuated by a single response from all present – “Reject the Finance Bill”.

When asked the reason why he is using art as a tool to create social consciousness, Ngartia has this to say, 

“Artists often deliver ideas wrapped in emotion. They cut through the noise to hit the right spot. That resonance is our privilege. Whether it is through songs that become anthems, murals memorialising, poems expressing the people’s feeling, visual art connecting dots in one frame, comedy and satire laughing in the face of tyranny, photography exposing impunity or stories mythologising, artists can be and have been an integral part of the current movement. 

“Our task is to allow the people to grieve through our words, to feed the flames with our brushstrokes, to inject joy when the spirits run low. To document all this in image and story so the history is not co-opted. To remind everyone that love is at the heart of such movements. That the unity we achieve while dancing to Anguka Nayo together is the antidote to the divide and conquer tactics.

“I watched police officers shoot protesters outside parliament on a screen down a different street. Immediately after, the crowd belted out the most passionate version of Daima Mimi Mkenya I’ve ever heard. Eric Wainaina provided us with a celebratory song, an anthem and a dirge. All in one. Two decades before the current movement. The song was as old as some of the Kenyans murdered that day.”

Role play has been widely used in theatre to engage the community in identifying solutions to unjust and inequitable systems and institutions. Creatives Garage is another collective that embraces theatre as a form of protest art. They staged a live performance titled Blooms in the Dark at Braeside School on 13 July. With acts purposely titled to declare dissent – “Ruto must go”, for example – the show juxtaposed the ongoing fight and advocacy for political change with the fight for the rights of minorities such as the LGBTQ+ community. 

A close scrutiny of the kind of art currently being created by Kenyan Gen Zs and Millennials would reveal the younger generation’s understanding of the effectiveness of using craftsmanship as a means of spreading political philosophy and consciousness. Guided by a knowledge of history, an understanding of how dissentients in the past fought oppression, they are using art to express and portray their deepening disillusionment with the political and economic state of the country. 

The protest art currently being released in Kenya spans the visual, literary, and sound media. Through creative works grounded in the act of addressing the political issues that have resulted in the recent protests, Kenyan creatives have demonstrated that art is one of the galvanising forces of the ongoing Gen Z revolution and movement. Music, live theatre performances, poetry and other forms of artistic expression are being used as innovative tools to amplify the echoes of dissent that are reverberating through the streets of Kenya.

Art imitates life. Right now the art being created by young Kenyans documents in an unprecedented manner the ongoing struggle against the reigning political model. Kenyan creatives are utilising their talent as a medium to express their views on the dissent around them. They are aligning themselves with the burgeoning Gen Z Movement through their art, further fuelling the view that the current wave of protests differs in a profound way with all previous ones that have taken place in Kenya. The protests are not just leaderless and tribeless, they are also Artsy.