MUSIC

An hip-hop artist and his battle against giriama's losing traditions

In new Katoi Wa Tabaka's video "Kamarungana" a warning to the new generations

01-02-2018 by Freddie del Curatolo

Very often it is up to poets and singers to bring to light the changes, moral decay and loss of identity.
When, as in the case of the Kenyan coast, institutions are at large in their educational and social welfare role, it takes someone who carries out, with clear messages, the daily battles to denounce what is wrong.
This seems to be the role that Katoi Mathias Pato, the artistic name "Katoi Wa Tabaka", was chosen within the Kilifi County community.
Hip-hop artist and organizer of events, Katoi has long since been a "cultural agitator" and his songs follow a very specific direction, that of moving the new generations of his people and making them open their eyes on important issues, on urgent needs that are often buried by the speed with which the civilization of Kenya, development and technology, overwhelm the customs, traditions and social life of the Kenyan coast.
In the last video of the song "Kamarungana", we talk about the feuds between brothers and sisters, about not recognizing the role of fathers within families, about voting solely for the worship of money and material goods.
"Kamarungana speaks of brothers within his own family who no longer speak to each other - explains Katoi - and who refuse to help each other, as our Mijikenda tradition would claim. And he denounces those extreme situations that are more and more frequent on the coast: children who murder fathers because fathers refuse to sell their land, young girls who give birth at home without knowing who is their father because of poverty they prostitute themselves, children who leave for Europe and no longer return because they are afraid of suffering sorceries. At the base of everything is the lack of communication, one of the evils of our times.
Just like the local poet Kazungu Wa Hawerisa, Katoi Wa Tabaka puts in music and rhyme the condition of an ethnicity whose values are disappearing, telling the story of daily life in the hope of reaching the people's conscience.
And it does so through a form of art and culture with which you can still leverage young people, rap and hip-hop music.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator