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CD
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STCD 3051CD
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2010 release. D.O. Misiani and his band, Shirati Jazz, did not invent benga, the energetic dance music of the Luo people of Kenya and Tanzania, but they were the ones who defined its modern form, with its hypnotic electric guitars and fabulously active bass, and made it popular throughout East Africa. Their records, released internationally in the late 1980s and early '90s, introduced benga to the world. Because of benga, D.O. Misiani, who was born in Tanzania in 1940 and died in Kenya in 2006, is probably now the second-most famous Luo in the world. (The most famous? That would be the American-born Barack Obama, whose father was a Luo from Kenya.) Misiani was a guitarist, singer and songwriter. He wrote songs on all kinds of topics, not least love and politics. Both of those topics got him into trouble. His love songs necessitated his hasty departure from his hometown when he was 20. His political songs got him jailed in Kenya and deported back to Tanzania. But he remained undaunted and unsilenced, and every controversy added to his legend and spread his fame. When Europeans and Americans "discovered" contemporary African music in the '80s, D.O. Misiani & Shirati Jazz was the East African band that attracted the most attention. Those albums have been out of print for years, but benga has never faded away and D.O. Misiani & Shirati Jazz are unforgettable.
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