A space where we can fight for creativity and not popularity

What you need to know:

  • For some strange reason it looked more like a “who showed up in what” kind of award rather than who won what. It was an award show that was consumed by a seemingly inexhaustible inferno of showing off.

  • Many years later, it’s still stuck in our memory that Prezzo once landed in a chopper and Wawesh rolled in on a mkokoteni, but we don’t remember who won the most awards.

  • A Kenyan musician can’t use an award they won as a bragging right simply because no one will care.

One of the most important award shows in music history took place earlier this week and as expected everything happened “big”, it had big names handing out awards, big names receiving awards, big names performing on stage. What stood out the most was the “Black Lives Matter” show case and Beyonce. Other than that there’s the usual Grammy Awards script; make a few people happy, disappoint others and dish out awards to random famous people regardless of whether they are talented or not.

The grandiose yet pointless award just like the BET Awards and any other international music show awards, is nothing but an excuse to shove the ‘music greats’ of that year in the hopes that something exciting will happen.

Something like Kanye West interrupting an acceptance speech or giving awards to people who really don’t deserve them.

Basically, as time goes by, the Grammy Awards have become so predictable with a history of oversight and missteps. For an institution that claims to rewards artistic excellence, they sure get so many things wrong.

And it’s almost like a messed up tradition the world over.  Award shows generally never care about art or recognising artistic excellence. In Kenya, we’ve had all sorts of award shows and not a single one that has stood the test of time, maybe apart from the Groove Music Awards which awards excellence in gospel music. Back in the day Kenya had Chaguo La Teeniez which was our then version of BET awards and had tonnes of hype and excitement around it.

For some strange reason it looked more like a “who showed up in what” kind of award rather than who won what. It was an award show that was consumed by a seemingly inexhaustible inferno of showing off.

Many years later, it’s still stuck in our memory that Prezzo once landed in a chopper and Wawesh rolled in on a mkokoteni, but we don’t remember who won the most awards.

A Kenyan musician can’t use an award they won as a bragging right simply because no one will care.

Accolades

If we were to give awards in Kenya, if we were to recognise musicians, producers and composers who put in extra effort on their craft, we would have a totally different industry.

But we don’t really care about accolades, a space where creatives are not celebrated enough, and a space where you can thrive without necessarily having excellent works of art. If we would award Kenyan music creative according to how good their craft is, we would have people talking about Dan Chizi Aceda for having one of the most iconic voices in the country and for the fact that he has two Kisima awards under his belt, or Fena for making the album of the year in 2014.

But we don’t care about all that. If we cared enough about art, we would be talking about Sara Mitaru’s music, or how Erick Wainaina isn’t celebrated enough, he would get a lifetime achievement award, but we don’t care enough.

Letting Chaguo La Teeniez become one of our biggest award shows was a mistake from the start, because let’s face it, what do teenagers really know about music? CHAT awards created a space where music fans are wowed by side shows and not craft, the music at that time was chosen by teenagers.

CHAT awards was the protégé of the American Teens Choice Awards, which only thrives because the content was tailored for kids. Let’s start to redress the whole award ceremony balance. If award committees really cared about creating artistic impressions or atmospherics, there would be a different list, we would be having a different conversation today.

We are in a space where people don’t know who Tim Rimbui is or for the fact that he executive produced some of the best Kenyan songs and albums, a space full of missteps – even though one would say it is never that serious.

As much as an artiste shouldn’t create music to gather awards, an honorable mention would go a long way for them, it would help to acknowledge how consistent DJ Adrian has been over the years or how well Caroline Mutoko did on radio. We don’t have anyone to shape the music conversation because the people who are supposed to do that are one hit away from being irrelevant.

We need a space that talks about how amazing Blinky Bill produced “Something for You”, a space that celebrated Philip Mwaniki for all the years he has put in arts and entertainment journalism.

A space that pays attention to Eddie Githengi and doesn’t ask who he is.

We already have enough Susan Luccis, we need to recognise artistic excellence, we need a space where we can fight for creativity and not popularity.

We badly need an entertainment space that respects brilliance and calls out mediocrity. We need to give awards to those who deserve them.