Music, Memory and Forgetting: Patriotic Choral Music in Kenya

Abstract

This article considers choral music as a repository of history within the Kenyan social and political realm. It examines this music genre as a tool used by different government regimes not only to document the official version of Kenya’s history but also to enforce specific political ideologies on the public. The article argues that state influence in the composition, performance and distribution of choral music promotes a culture of forgetting historical injustices, with the aim of forging a united Kenyan nation. Much choral music composed and performed in the immediate aftermath of Kenya’s struggle for independence urged the public to forget colonial injustices in order to build the new country. We explore how these songs continue to play a significant role in postindependence Kenya, primarily by means of a network of distribution that involves airplay on both private and state broadcasters and during national holidays. The adaptation and exploitation of these songs by different Kenyan regimes signal an impulse to silence public memories of political injustice. Our article exposes the impossibility of such forgetting, and demonstrates the contradictions between forced public amnesia and autonomous private recollection.