EAST AFRICAN RADIO AND TELEVISION

Bush Baby, East Africa Radio & TV presenter

East Africa has a constituency of three countries: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Lately, Rwanda and Burundi have been attached to the region. The people of East Africa also have a homogenous history. The common denominator as their erstwhile colonial master Britain. The colonial era produced a unifying infrastructure that evolved into the East African community a post-independence union of the three states. The countries then had a unified railways, university and later airlines that were tethered to this community. Its demise in 1977 fragmented the three countries into their respective boundaries but the last decades saw efforts towards a reunion.

There also existed a linguistic union of the three countries in which Swahili traversed their communal spaces. Because of its homogeneity, the African Union (formerly O.A.U.) proposed to contain it as the language of Africa. And wait a minute Michael Jackson also used it in the intro to his blockbuster single Liberian girl. How popular this was. In many areas of the world Swahili is easily recognized as ‘the African language’.

With these two links in mind it was natural that the three countries not only remained bounded in a common history and destiny but also fostered an intersecting cultural heritage particularly through music. The music of each of the three countries has been influential onto the other. Simba Wanyika from Tanzania had immense influence on the Kenyan music scene of the 70s and 80s, as did the recording studios in Kenya on Ugandan music. Today Ogopa deejays from Kenya filter their rustic percussive influence onto the contemporary Ugandan Popular Music scene and Tanzania’s Bongo flavor infuses with ease into the living rooms of the three East African countries.

Position of East Africa

The media has been crucial in this cultural syndicate as some media organizations strived to traverse the common borders in their daily business. The Nation media group’s East African newspaper and its sister act Daily Nation from Kenya have covered the region’s socio-economic and political events with microscopic detail. The coverage of the music in these media platforms has been very useful to its development. In the global music industry, the media is integral to the circuit of production, distribution and consumption.

From the heart of Dar es Salaam emanates a Radio and Television station broadcasting to the three countries that form inner East Africa. Appropriately named East Africa Radio and East Africa Television the apolitical entity was formed in July 2001 and has offered East Africa a rare possibility of sharing its wealth of home grown music from one source. With the following frequencies:

87.8 FM (Dar es Salaam), 94.7 FM (Nairobi) and 99.0 FM (Kampala).

The Channel 5 Eatv logo

Click Here to visit the Eatv web site

According to the company profile, ‘East Africa Radio is an urban radio station playing a diverse music mix unsurpassed in the East African region. From mainstream Hip Hop and R&B to the various African pop styles, East Africa Radio prides itself in putting African music and local artists first. Incorporating other African and international art forms – Kwaito, Soul, Dance, Pop, Reggae, Ragga - East Africa Radio endeavors to keep the listener at the forefront of emerging trends.’1

In its initial stages East Africa radio passed as an American’ radio station broadcasting to the region. The programming and language preference were too alien for the common folk to acclimatize. Several changes from managerial to programming were inducted and the ‘localization’ concept was established in 2002. The music, language and issues were mixed and prioritized from a local angle with a bit of foreign. This gave it a professional identity and rendered a measure of cultural emancipation for the People of East Africa. From the company profile:

‘Every show is a combination of English and Kiswahili’2.

One program feature UTAKE (Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya) is an hour (from 09:00 hrs –10:00 hrs East African Time) emphatic on music from the East African region with no interruptions from outside musics.

Both stations clearly recognize the common reality of global and local languages in the intertwined ‘glocal’ society that Africa has become. Today East Africa radio and its sister Television station offer diversity, link the region and propel the music industry in the remote sense that they are mass oriented and help East African artists to be seen and heard by a much larger audience than they would have had in their respective countries.

As audiovisual platform they showcase the wealth of East African Popular music. Tanzanian musicians are now household names in Kenya and Uganda and vice versa increasing the possibility of sharing their works, sold out concerts and records, copyright issues not withstanding.

The only shortfall in this exercise appears to be its relegation to the metropolis of the three countries. However with recent expansion strategies at least within Kenya (station has expanded its transmission to Kisumu and Mombasa) and in Tanzania (to Arusha), this decentralization offers more opportunity for the artist whose music is rotated on these stations.

Daressalam, home of Eatv (Channel 5) and East Africa radio

The impact of East Africa Radio and Television is far reaching than is recognized. There is an emergent East African Popular Music. It is also setting common standards of production for the three countries as cross-border collaboration will be more frequent and the songs played on East Africa Radio and East Africa Television will map the contours of musical production (both audiovisual) within the three countries. This will supply a steady growth of the music as the more the music is broadcast the more production is observed, as new artists aspire to join the fray and veterans seek maintenance. Take the following scenario for instance. Previously the East African musician did not envisage the music video as mandatory, the appearance of East Africa Television has reformed this perspective. Visual creativity is spurned making the industry more productive and diverse.

Because East Africa Radio and Television placed Swahili at the forefront of their mass communication model, East African Popular Music is expected to employ Swahili as a tool for communicating to the regional audience in effects establishing their own identity and their consumer’s identity through language.

At least the creation of multi-lingual songs is possible with Swahili as a partial component. Niamini, Chameleon’s lyrical remix of kumobwesigwa (in luganda and Swahili) or Red Sans bi-lingual album (English and Swahili) are examples. The implication of this is that the multi-lingual musician will hit at a larger audience than the uni-lingual. Incidentally the non-Swahili speaking audience will also start using Swahili as a means of communication starting with basic lyrical codes adopted such as nakupenda, hakuna matata or wanipa raha.

East Africa Radio and Television will do what regional governments have failed to enact, national languages. It will also unconsciously help the revived East African Community concept based in Arusha grow within the common populace of the three countries. One final decision by this consortium that will benefit the industry could be the establishment of a regional newspaper.