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Music at Kakamega - Henry Hamburger

Page history last edited by Henry Hamburger 10 years, 2 months ago

 

Among the many musical instruments I have learned to play poorly, the sukuti, a west-Kenyan drum, holds a special place in memory, along with the guy who, for a price, had taught me three different ways to strike the lizard-skin drumhead, when he stopped showing up. You can derive your own sukuti lessons from the demo at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP8an60epJc and see another instrument from the same region, the lyre-like litungu, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyXLVXGJoCs . From the latter video I have learned that the litungu is no longer confined to a mere 7 notes but now has 8 strings, an ordinary scaleful so to speak, tuned compatibly with our keyboards, possibly an asset, depending on your viewpoint.

 

These instruments were played in the vicinity of Kakamega Secondary School in 1963-65 when I was there teaching "advanced level" pure and applied mathematics, aka "maths," and I still have one of each. As part of a righteous respect for host country and culture, I founded a music club, enticed a litungu player to perform at the inaugural meeting and urged students to make their own local instruments. Gently but firmly they let me know that they had no interest in such things but that if I would purchase the hardware some of them would build a guitar, a project that actually succeeded. We shared an interest in music, but my students and I had passed by each other on a cultural bridge.

 

Straddling that bridge with a kind of Anglo-African musical sensibility was the school's choir leader, one Arthur Kemoli, whose musical genius and hard work made him a national figure; his recent obituary is at http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000066664&story_title=Kenya-Kemoli:-the-fallen-music-giant- . In time, Kemoli graduated and was replaced by my student Caleb Oyuke - later to become the pioneer dean of sciences at Kenyatta University - who invited me to be faculty sponsor of the choir. I did little in that role but when my tour was up Caleb graciously awarded me a framed photo of the choir, mouths open with song, with him leading. I have it still, but now, 47 years later, I am soon to return it to the school in response to a request from current principal Oliver Minishi via John Basinger, another American and Kakamega teacher of the 60s.

 

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