Sauti Sol launches own record label

In 2005, three young men thought they would take their high school choir experience further afterwards. Bien-Aimé Baraza, Willis Chimano and Savara Mudigi had been part of the music group Voices in the Light, at Upper Hill High School.

What started as an A cappella group would go on to become a band with guitarist Polycarp Otieno joining them in 2008. The rest, as they say, is history.

With the band announcing the official launch of their record label, as well as the first artiste and track under it, the band is coming full circle in its musical sojourn.

When they first came out, Sauti Sol had a niche fan-base. At a time when hip-hop and kapuka beats, coupled with electronically-aided performers, were the pull for most youthful ears, they came in with acoustic sounds and pure vocals in their music.

When playback tapes were the order of “live” performances, they would come in with drum sets, keyboards, guitars, and a set of voices that was unmatched with any studio-recorded song. With this, they could alter any performance that they put on, such that what you experienced at one event would be a different experience at another. Mash-ups, jamming and all other kinds of “improvs” became their mode of performance.

Slowly, people started taking note of this band that was carving out a different path to the “mikono juu”, “piga nduru” class of entertainers. When their first two albums came out, the instrumentation was done using live instruments, rather than electronically created beats.

As soon as the group held a listening-party for their third studio album, Live and Die in Afrika, in November, 2015, they started dropping Easter eggs about this intended label. Bien had been quoted saying that they were going to “make this a Sol generation”. They had even said that things were going to change in the industry.

RECORD LABEL

The album cover was in itself different to any covers we had seen at that point. The album launch was a big event. When you think that they did a five city tour, locally, before taking it to selected cities across Africa and the world, now it began to dawn on us what they meant when they talked about changing the industry.

Their sound had also now taken a more commercial path, in order to incorporate a larger audience of music consumers. And it worked. Their fan base had grown to include those who didn’t think their sound was mainstream and too “up-town” for their liking. They had also now captured the old and the young. Their music was more danceable, lyrics were shorter and became easier to grasp and the songs were more edgy. Of course, some of the older fans would claim to no longer be fans, since the group had “sold out”, but it was evident that they were on the right track.

At this point they had only done very few collaborative works, and they felt like it was time to reach out to other acts in the country and around Africa. They remain the single Kenyan musical make-up to have the most international collaborations — working with artistes from Tanzania, Angola, South Africa, Uganda, Togo, Zimbabwe and Nigeria. The band’s new album “Afrikan Sauce” is wholly a collaborative body.

Having also clinched numerous nominations and awards in the last five years, internationally and locally, the four men have finally settled on sharing their formula for success.

On Monday, Sol Generation, a record label founded by the four members of Sauti Sol, was unveiled. The label had also signed, and recorded a song and video, by its first artiste. Sauti Sol took the opportunity of Bensoul’s Lucy release to also say that their 2017 proclamation of a desire to start a managing and recording company had finally come to life.

“We are looking to introduce a new generation (of artistes) and we want them to be greater,” said Bien.

He said they were looking to take Bensoul (Benson Mutua), and others who will come later on, to places the band had not been able to reach. Bensoul is not your average artiste. The singer, songwriter, vocalist, producer and instrumentalist is by all means a musical genius. He was one of the musical directors and bass player for H_art the Band. Having studied music in high school, he plays the bass, acoustic and electric guitars, keyboard, drums and violin. Sol Generation will “cater to his immediate needs to ensure that he is comfortable enough to make music, alone”.

“We’ve built a solid team over the years that made us achieve what we have so far. We have been recording our own music over the years, we just didn’t have the label set up formally. We will be cutting Bensoul’s journey, and I think he has the ability of being as big as what we are in the next five years,” said Bien, even as he says the artiste should not be compared to anyone else.

PREPARED

However, when you close your eyes and listen to the track, you can’t help but hear Sauti Sol in there, somewhere. Maybe it is because he had jammed with the band and maybe because they saw themselves in him. His song is not any less exciting, however, and is more hip and more up tempo than even their most fast-paced track Shake Your Bam Bam.

Even with the recordings, tours around the world as well as video shoots, the team found time to do research into what it would take to not only put up a proper studio. Savara had enrolled in Stanford Seed, a comprehensive year-long management program led by Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty.

“It was a rigorous course but from it we were able to structure our business, for the music of our signed artistes to make some financial sense,” says Savara.

Polycarp is currently pursuing CopyrightX, a certificate level course through a partnership programme by Harvard Law School, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and GoDown Art Centre.

That it has taken them so much time to put the label together, they are very optimistic that this will be a successful business venture.

“It’s very easy for an artiste to go to a studio and record a track, with auto-tune to make it sound good enough. However, successful artistes take time and have good structures that have been well thought through. You will see artistes, producers, songwriters, session musicians. It’s a big system,” says Savara.

The group says they are looking for talent currently, and those who feel they have what it takes should reach out to them.