SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2015
A trial gig at Pizza Garden in 1991 gave birth to the biggest revolution in live music in the country, reminisces musician Sam Gatheru Muthee of the 1980s Dereva Chunga Maisha fame. PHOTO| COURTESY
The year is 1991, the month is April, and I am at Pizza Garden, Westlands in Nairobi. My friend Kafel Maina and I have just landed a gig to perform in a new and never tried before format at the hotel.
It was meant to be light entertainment for end-of-week Pizza Garden patrons — mainly high-end clients who wanted a little relaxation.
So for a very modest fee of Sh250, the management, under the Jacaranda Hotel general manager Joe Muriuki, asked us to give it a go and see what happens. He was pessimistic and we were determined to prove him wrong. He agreed to try us out for one month.
On the first day, the patrons received us politely, but seemed to enjoy the country music we were playing on box guitars accompanied by basic amplification from a home hi-fi system and a single microphone.
The shows would end early as the bar was not allowed to remain open beyond 11pm.
This is because Pizza Garden is an annex of Jacaranda Hotel, and they did not want to disturb the hotel’s clientele. Pizza Garden mainly catered for local patrons and food and drinks prices reflected that compared to the main hotel’s prices.
As we called for last orders song, the patrons wanted more, and we were asked to return the following Wednesday.
It was during these Wednesday ‘ladies’ night’ gigs that a real sense of what was to be took place. By the following Saturday, word of mouth had spread about the music at Pizza Garden. The place was jampacked. Beer sales soared on these two nights, and the gig was officially fixed.
NEGOTIATED NEW DEAL
We renegotiated a new deal but the rates were still very low as we had nobody to compare with.
By the end of the first month, entertainment at Pizza Garden had changed, and Fridays were introduced as guitar nights, too.
The place rocked to the extent revellers from the city centre would also show up on account of word of mouth. We knew we were onto something big here.
Those three days became club nights at the Pizza Garden and our pay was raised to Sh500 per night from Sh250. It was enough to put food on the tables at our two homes, but not for long.
Soon, other establishments learned of the Pizza Garden phenomenon and decided to copy it.
Maina left for County Hotel along Haile Selassie Avenue. But as soon as he left, a musician friend of ours, Joe Mwenda, suddenly appeared on the scene. Mwenda had returned home from Europe.
As is customary among musicians, I gave him space in my gig to play one or two songs. He exploded onto the scene with his stage presence, his very good voice and his mastery of the guitar.
He was spotted by the manager of Ngong Hills Hotel, who invited him to take up musical residence at the hotel on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Within two weeks, Ngong Hills was the place to be after 11pm.
So when Pizza Garden closed at 11pm, we would all troop to Ngong Hills to support our friend. It was different there. It was a bigger venue on a busy road with no time restriction, so we would stay till morning.
The club owners made a killing but the management refused to agree to his demand for a raise. So Mwenda left for Park Inn at Uhuru Park.
I was surprised one day when I was asked to play one or two Kikuyu songs by a regular patron at Pizza Garden, a Prof Kimura. I used to sing in English and Kiswahili. So I went to River Road to look for Kikuyu songs and started to listen to them on radio. I liked Albert Gacheru’s Mwendwa Wakwa Mariru, and it was my first Kikuyu song at Pizza Garden. Soon it become mandatory to play Kikuyu music.
Mwenda left Ngong Hills for Uhuru Park while Maina was at County Hotel. Maina had left me at Pizza Garden earlier for financial reasons.
I unsuccessfully resisted the mixing of gospel and secular songs in our one-man-guitar shows. I was overruled by the patrons and the song Iga Mirigo Thi became a club hit. This was quickly followed by Muugithi.
A new momentum was developed by this genre of entertainment.
Today, 24 years later, the one-man-guitar phenomenon is everywhere. Previously dominated by Kikuyu music, it was the precursor of the current Mulembe, Luo and Kamba nights.
The true pioneers of the one-man-guitar are Sam Gatheru Muthee of Dereva Chunga Maisha fame, Kafel Maina, the late Kongo at the Three Wheels, Ngong Road, Joe Mwenda of Ngong Hills and Uhuru Park and Wilson Kimama.
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