I grew up in Nairobi in a place called Kariokor.
So much traffic from early in the morning,
The only silences you'd experience was when you were sleeping.
As a child, the most present sounds were the matatus, which are the public transport
and the main means of transport to school.
They are super loud and play music at very extreme volumes.
I remember this was really exciting.
The sound of people excited to feel the bass frequencies and all these elements of the music.
As a child, I think I tended to lean more to louder noise-scapes because this is what
was immediate in my environment.
Way later, I find myself leaning towards music which is more meditative and calming.
Maybe when I was growing up I was exposed to so much noise that I needed time to slow things down.
When I was in high school, the family needed to find a new home and move from Kariokor to Rongai.
It's just on the border of the national park on the outskirts, like 30 minutes drive to the city.
In Rongai, it's super calm. And the nature was so close to me that I could hear more.
Like the birds were coming at the balcony in the morning.
I became more aware of sounds that were present and I started recording my environment.
This move to Rongai did help a lot to focus and know what I really want.
I recall there's so much like, noise, as I mentioned, that you wouldn't focus on one thing.
I wasn't even thinking of what I'll do maybe five years down the line.
Just taking out my recorder and record sounds and use these sounds on a piece of music
wasn't something that I'd have been thinking of in Kariokor.
This prompted me to bring a desk in my room and start producing.
I find myself leaning towards not having so many things to make my music with.
This limitation provokes inspiration to making the best with what I have.
I use tools or things which are very unexpected,
not so sure what will happen when I'm recording or jamming on the synths or what sounds they'll create,
just embracing what happens.
As a child, I knew my grandfather was a musician, but I didn't know him
as a renowned political musician or activist.
I was named directly after him. So my teachers or friends or people who knew his music
would ask, are you related to Kamaru?
In my university we studied his music
and my professors wanted to know more about myself and his life
and they made more efforts to see him more and learn from him and understand what he was thinking.
He wanted us to work together or be in the studio and produce music. And this was also around the same time
that I learned how to produce music.
And he was telling me that we needed to make something together. But that didn't happen.
And later is when I started this archival reissue project, which I've been doing since 2019.
His music was very intentional of what he was saying.
For example, he sang a song about what was happening in schools and almost caused a strike of the teachers council.
And the government wanted to ban the song.
Being authentic and honest with your art is something that I took a lot from him.
I moved to Berlin in November last year for my master's program in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts
at the Berlin University of the Arts, and the program takes three years.
The first few days was very difficult because the soundscape is so different from Nairobi
and I was trying to understand if things would change or will my sound change.
When I started with field recordings, I wasn't really thinking much about the sites themselves
it was more the recordings I was getting from these places.
But the more I've been recording and reading about the practices,
I feel like sound itself is the best way to learn and understand our surroundings.
When we are outside, it's not a must always to hit record.
There's something that I've been practicing here where I just go outside, just being still and listening.
Sometimes when I go out I carry sketchbooks and a pen,
I write and listen, explain how the surrounding is.
I've experienced the sound as it happened and not necessarily had to record it.
Sometimes I try to draw...
picture what I hear in a visual sense, so I can remember more of what I'm hearing.
For example, if something randomly becomes super loud, it'll change on the sketch in a way that
maybe with different lines or intensity of the color.
There's this idea that ambient music is very easy to make, but it doesn't have to be just layers and reverb.
Recordings which I find interesting use elements in extended ways
that create newer textures and melodies and rhythms.
If a piece of music blends well with field recordings, there's this sense of not knowing if the music is happening.
Also, like the back story of the places of the recorded sounds and...
just knowing that there's a narrative behind the piece of music, there's always something more to connect to.
When I'm working on a new piece of music, I can just go back to this huge library,
I name my field recordings with location and date.
I listen back and for example, when I hear, like, bells and goats and car passing
I'll write, 'bells, goats and car.'
I'm making now works based on pollution.
It's an eight channel piece of music. And it'll be in a museum, a listening room.
I use purely field recordings of the environment or archives of underwater sounds.
It was a new experience for me, making spaces with sounds.
Working on music on multiple speakers does change how you listen.
It's more of like how the space interacts with the sounds
and how you're moving within the space also creates this interaction with the piece.
I've had instances where people wouldn't have thought like ambient or experimental music
is for people who are based in Africa.
Stereotypical ideas that African music should be all rhythmic or drums or people dancing.
Your surroundings or environment or growing up or, for example, moving here,
so much things influence how you make art and should it be based on where you're from?
There's these genres and everyone is trying to fit and find a space within them but
I do want to make something different, try out something, like different moods and with sounds,
just trying to be myself and see where the music will take me.