Mganga: music wizard who loved the fine things in life

When Boniface Mganga’s car recently rammed into a trailer near Voi, killing him instantly, Kenya’s golden era of choral-acapella music equally went to the gods.

The man who defined this golden era started out as a David among Goliaths. Back in 1978, when the journey began, Mganga was a nobody, according to Crispin Kodi, the last founder member of the National Muungano Choir to speak to him the evening before his death.

In a city of proud and accomplished music conductors that he struggled to identify with, Mganga was an underling. Standing at barely five-foot-six, he was a short man with no name, no job and no respect among peers.

But he would rise to become President Moi’s favourite musician, a conductor of international repute, a Member of Parliament and assistant minister.

Like a villager

Back in those days, Christian and choral music was in vogue in Nairobi. The diminutive man from Taita Taveta, who laughed and shook hands like a villager – with his heart and hands out – wandered from one small choir to the other.

He lived in Mbotela and frequented St John’s, Pumwani, but he did not shine among the more competitive choirmasters in the city. When President Kenyatta died in 1978, the nation’s first state funeral heralded the era of mass choirs.

The Nairobi Mass Choir had 1,250 members drawn from Christian church choirs around the city.

They were trained and conducted by choirmasters from Nairobi’s leading churches: the late William Wasike of Our Lady of Visitation Catholic Church, Makadara; the late Darius Mbela of St Stephen’s ACK, Jogoo Road; the late John Madege and Arthur Agufwa of Makadara Friends Church; Dr Arthur Kemoli of Kariakor Friends; and Mr Otiende of St Barnabas. These men took turns conducting the mass choir. Their chairman was Mr Wasike.

Mganga had no recognised choir, so nobody paid him any attention. But his quiet passion for music, humble demeanour and effective conducting at Pumwani had caught the eye of one man: Chairman Wasike.

One day, Wasike asked his colleagues why they didn’t let Mganga conduct the mass choir. They all looked at him like he was mad. Nobody wanted to waste his breath explaining that Mganga was far from the class of Kenya’s top conductors.

Put foot down

Crispin Kodi says Wasike, a firm, no-drama leader, put his foot down. After the huge choir performed in front of newly inaugurated President Moi one day, Wasike sought the President’s ear.

“Mzee,” he said, “some of our highly educated members here have no jobs.” He pointed to Mganga, a graduate of the University of Nairobi.

According to Kodi, the President asked that Mganga report to State House the next Monday. When he showed up, the President offered him a job on the spot, first as an undersecretary. He would become a district officer.

The new President, whose love for choral music was obvious, took over the huge choir as patron and asked that it be trimmed down to a manageable number. It was reduced to 450 members and named the Nairobi Quarter Mass Choir.

According to Victor Elolo, an early member now living in Maryland, USA, the majority of members came from the Jogoo Road trio: Our Lady of Visitation, Catholic, St Stephen’s ACK, and Makadara Friends.

A few members trickled in from other churches in the city. Over the years, members would come from many more Pentecostal and Evangelical churches.

“On September 31, 1978, the choir performed at State House, Nairobi,” said Kodi. “Mganga impressed the President with his first major composition, Mungu Bariki Kenya.”

The President, having demanded further trimming of the choir down to 250 members, was ready for a different brand name, says Regina Kasyoka, a retired teacher and founder member.

Kanu Choir? No way! said Mganga. This choir was defined by its diversity of faith and ethnic background; patriotism or politics came a distant second. In their diversity of faith, members came together to underline their common worship of the Christian God.

In their ethnic diversity, they celebrated Kenya’s rich cultures and customs. This is a largely misreported fact, because Kenyans would know this choir only at State functions and in broadcast media.

Out of some hundred pieces that would form its repertoire, barely five per cent would be patriotic or praise songs by which it is wrongly defined; over 95 per cent were Christian and folk songs.

After Mganga dismissed suggestions for a political name, a group that included Chairman Wasike, John Shibia and Crispin Kodi picked the name Muungano Choir. The President approved, adding the suffix, “National.”

Top soloist

Mr Moi remained patron and continued to pay for the choir’s uniforms and flight tickets for many tours abroad, according to Kennedy Indiazi, the choir’s top soloist who joined in 1983 and now works at the Gender ministry.

Membership in Muungano was by invitation. It was tough to pass an audition but once in you became a life member. The audition would be conducted by a panel of choir veterans to measure voice quality – pitch, range and projection.

Two other things were important: aptitude to learn and remember complex arrangement with speed and accuracy, and one’s reason to join Muungano.

If you said you wanted to travel abroad or make money, you were likely to fail the audition. People who joined Muungano had to be defined by passion for music. Period.

Director Mganga had a gift of never forgetting a voice and a name. He needed to learn a name just once. Like a master poker player shuffling his deck of cards, he would listen to the slightest change in a voice and shuffle people to blend.

“Kodi B!” he once called out to me one night before a performance at a ranch north of Nanyuki, “go between Kennedy and Juma Odemba and join the solo.

Juma’s voice is too powerful; those two bulls are clashing.” When I got there, I couldn’t hear my own voice. In that one move, Mganga magically created one perfect pitch from three voices.

Like an obsessive guitarist always testing his strings for perfect pitch, Mganga’s ears would pick up one voice out of 100 that was out of pitch.

At the beginning of practice on a tour of St Louis, Missouri, I was losing my voice and fell into a near-whisper, for fear of being called out. It didn’t work. Mganga stopped the choir in the third bar.

“Kodi B!” he called out. “What’s going on in your host’s house? How long is the air conditioning on?” We were at the tail end of a long summer and St Louis was hotter than Lodwar. I told him the air conditioning stayed on all night.

“Don’t turn it on again,” he ordered. “Air conditioning seeps the moisture out of your voice. So instead of singing like my third tenor soloist, you start singing like a girl who has not reached puberty!” Guys laughed at me for a week.

Controversies

Like any organisation, Muungano had its share of hardships and controversies. The most spoken of was money management. On a tour of Spain, a small group plotted rebellion, according to several sources from that trip.

The group reportedly complained that choir members were never given any money. Mganga got to know about the plot shortly before it was supposed to unravel on stage to embarrass him.

“The grumblers probably had a good point,” said Kodi, who was on the trip, “but they picked a poor way to address it. Mganga had his point, too.

“He always worried that some misfortune might befall a choir member far from home and he would have no money to handle the emergency. So he usually preferred to save the money till everybody returned home before, sometimes, sharing modest sums among the group.”

Kodi said the choir’s bank account always had three signatories and a withdrawal needed two signatures. After Mganga’s death, secretary Esther Mzera confirmed that Muungano had tens of thousands of shillings in the bank.

But Mganga took a lot of heat from his rivals. From the beginning when he edged out colleagues who were perceived as more qualified, he braved grudging respect from most of his contemporaries all his life.

Soon after Chairman Wasike planted him on top of the choir, Muungano was invited to State House, Nairobi, for performances. But, as another founder member who was there says, two choirs showed up: one led by Mganga, the other by one of the original choirmasters who was a permanent secretary.

The President was visibly surprised and reportedly greeted his guests, led Mganga’s team to an inner room and came back to talk with the other leader. “What is going on?” the President pointedly asked. “I thought we agreed to have one choir; are you and Mganga together?”

The visibly embarrassed PS answered in the affirmative and nervously assured the President there was no competition at all. Two weeks later, Voice of Kenya radio announced that the leader had been fired from government. The episode planted the seeds of rivalry permanently.

Mganga shied from public controversy. The man did not cut the figure of a combatant. He was never a disagreeable man. But he had the uncanny ability to rally infinite loyalty among many of his troops.

You would never catch him in the battlefield. His troops fought all his battles. It was, therefore, simply impossible for his detractors to beat him.

Leadership and personality

Mganga’s dread for controversy showed in his leadership style. While he was not shy to censure unbecoming behaviour, he would never face the whole choir head-on for battle.

Ever a clever tactician, he would pick the path of least resistance. If he had an opinion that met overwhelming opposition he would instantly retreat.

Afterward, he would engage committee members or individuals and get to an amicable resolution. If he was wrong, which was rare, he did not hesitate to back down.

This is probably why Muungano never disintegrated into loud, querulous factions or fractured into rival splinter groups. The choir only gave birth to younger groups with spiced-up styles, including Juma Odemba’s Kayamba Africa and the other Kayambas.

All the offshoots retained Mganga’s blessing, members never losing their seats in the choir. It didn’t matter if a member was away for one or 10 years.

All you needed to do upon return was to show up at training and pull up a chair. According to Kodi, only once did the committee, not Mganga, expel a member for misconduct.

Mganga, a teetotaller, loved the fine things in life. Music came at the top, of course. President Moi passed on to him the love for public service.

He was also known for outstanding taste. When he built his house in Lavington near then Vice-President George Saitoti, he personally oversaw every finishing detail, from the open American kitchen bar that stands out on the ground floor to the Italian marble floors in his guest bathrooms.

The man loved quality cars – he died in a white Toyota Prado. Over 15 years he also owned two Mercedes Benzes, cream and grey, and a maroon Opel Astra.

He played squash a few evenings a week and craved tea, even under a 1 p.m. African sun. He hated to be caught ignorant, so he found time to read. He researched obsessively for debate in Parliament.

He cared about image, which is why he could fuss over a shoe and a tie. Why else would this confident man seek a second and third opinion when buying a tie for himself or a dress for his daughter, every time he shopped with his choir abroad?

On travels abroad Mganga picked his final team based, not only on voice excellence, but exemplary personal discipline. All his people boarded the return flight home.

Members who found life or study opportunities abroad would return home before taking another flight, mostly to the US, where 20 former members now live.

Less than 12 hours after his death, the news hit the homepage of African Musical Arts, Inc in USA. The man died holding international repute, celebrated more abroad than at home.

Every year, even while serving in the Kibaki government, Mganga travelled the world to adjudicate choral music, even in South America, whose languages he neither spoke nor understood.

Barely a month before his death on July 6, he had travelled to America, where the choral music fraternity demanded a comeback for Muungano, according to Tony Ondeng’, a member of the baseline now living in Dallas.

Mganga, who at home had a knack for summoning more than 50 singers in just a few hours, told friends he had exported enough talent to America. “It is possible to fly all of them to one city and put up a serious show,” he told Ondeng’.

A day after his death, his troops in America heard about their teacher’s last wish to rally members for a Muungano-in-America concert.

Now they plan to do just that at the end of July: get together in Des Moines, Iowa, for one last concert in honour of their maestro.

The music

Among the songs that Mganga wrote, arranged or adapted – he composed few – one can identify four distinct genres.

In the first genre, his love for the Christian message and a douse of patriotism stand out. This music was often written in plain script with complete phrases and rendered conversationally.

Early in his career, Mganga fused religious messaging with patriotism. His very first national hit, Mungu Bariki Kenya, fell in this genre. At its extreme, this genre produced flattery music that probably went into President Moi’s head.

The height of this was a composition celebrating 10 years of Nyayo era. Beautifully composed and arranged with a prayerful tune from Malawi – later adapted by mainstream churches into Yesu ni Tumaini Langu – Mganga’s last song for Mr Moi, Enzi Ya Nyayo probably went too far in praise of a man.

Naimba nikishukuru, nimelala salama. Nyayo! Nyayo! Amani Kenya, twakushukuru kwa amani. Wakenya wote twasherehekea, Kenya nzima yafurahi. Nderemo kote na vigelegele, furaha yabubujika. Heko Baba Moi, Enzi ya Nyayo sote tumeshuhudia, mafanikio.

Back then, Kenya knew only one party, one television, one radio station, and no outlet for diverse, national debate. So the artiste threw himself into his art, indulging in adulating prose, saved only by a masterful arrangement.

Listening to the song, one does catch a call for patriotism, when the lyrics call upon fellow countrymen to jealously guard the peace, without which it’s impossible to build a nation.

But it quickly returns to flattery: Miaka mingi ya ufanisi, natazama nikiwaza. Ndege wa angani waimba, Moi! Moi! Tawala tu. Jua, mwezi zinamulika, njia yake Baba Moi. Nazo nyota zinaandika, Moi! Moi! Tawala tu.

Personally, I never heard worse sycophancy, perhaps only in Thomas Wasonga’s Tawala Kenya. I always sang Enzi ya Nyayo with a wicked smile, tuning off most of the message, but thoroughly enjoying the quality of arrangement.

But this genre also had songs designed to teach. Tupange Uzazi was one such song done in the early 1980s.

Always appealing to the Kenyan religious orientation, Mganga opened this song with a prompt announcement that God created humankind and commanded them to become good stewards of creation; Kenyans should not stray from this command.

Then the lyrics pointedly demand responsible parenting. In the second genre, Mganga’s music celebrates cultural folklore.

He always sought music that told the stories of Kenya’s diverse communities. Many of these were social commentaries that caricatured stiff traditions and negative stereotypes.

A common hunting ground for these songs was the annual Kenya National Music Festivals, of which he was exceedingly proud.

He would identify a song, polish its rough edges, spice it up and give it his signature flavour of fine, often complex, arrangement.

Muungano would assimilate the song quickly, while Mganga continued to fine-tune it to the mark of quality. Examples here are Mushere Mwene from Western Province, which criticises the bad treatment of a widow still in mourning.

Chang’aa na Bhangi cautions young men to stay away from drugs. Ndimi Kajogolo from the Coast is a happy song by revelling adults. Selina Kipenzi Changu pokes fun at a city girl who falls victim to sugar daddies.

In the third genre, Mganga shows off his love for poetry. A true Mswahili, he would arrange a song purely for its poetic value. He would borrow music that resonated beyond native borders and blended in Muungano’s style.

All of Mganga’s music is arranged for acapella, singing without modern instrumental accompaniment. Voices were the centrepiece of his arrangements.

“The human voice cannot be substituted with any other musical instrument,” he often said. “It is the single instrument capable of producing the most beautiful sound.”

The song he picked out sprang from a fusion of the rich and varied rhythmic and melodic traditional and neo-traditional African tunes with exuberant and intense quasi-Western harmonic style. So, in the rearrangement of Daudi Kabaka’s classic, Msichana wa Sura Nzuri or Gabriel Omollo’s Lunch Time, the tongue replaces the guitar. Male and female voices take turns humming like forest doves.

Rhythmic ascents

The occasional drum, kayamba, triangle and wooden castanet – used to produce clicks for rhythmic ascents – are reserved for heavy-rhythm pieces like the isukuti beat of William Lubanga’s Mang’ondo Dora or Dr Arthur Kemoli’s Nomusalaba Gogenda, the gripping Good Friday piece where three-quarters down the entire alto line drops an entire octave, eight notes total, before latching onto an exuberant finish.

Or the more elegant Missa Luba, the Latin Mass based on traditional Congolese songs that the genius Belgian priest, Father Guido Haazen, arranged in eight voices!

Mganga bequeathed his preferred styles to all of Muungano’s offshoots. Most notable, the various Kayamba groups never stray far from their master’s musical genre. Adieu, Maestro Mganga, father of Kenya’s a capella.

The writer was a member of Muungano for 11 years