Ogopa

In defining East African contemporary music two significant elements protrude. Bongo flavours from Tanzania and the Ogopa sound from Kenya. In this discussion I choose to deal with the later. Ogopa is the Swahili word for something that is frightening usually premised on the incredibility of its experience.

Redsan & Amani

Ogopa in the context of East African popular music is a production house turned record label formed in 1999. Within its circle are producer Lucas Bideko and associates Francis and Banda. They are responsible for the production of monster classics as Jose Chameleon’s ‘mama mia’ and the 2002 Kora nominated single ‘wassei (gitu rai)’ from Mr. Googz and Vinnie Banton. Ogopa is primarily a production house and record label but also became perceived as a fused musical genre from urban Kenya.

Though it was easy to identify the entry of the Ogopa sound from their ‘Golden gate’ headquarters in Nairobi into the East African popular music scenario, their visual presence was elusive and only became synonymous with that of the artists that they produced .In Uganda for instance many people felt the song ‘Julie’ by Red San was sang by Ogopa mistaking the production camp for the artists who recorded with the camp.

Their anonymity was purposeful as they intended to build the Ogopa brand name as opposed to individuals and this at the expense of some of their artists involved releasing these songs as their (Ogopa) own product (kind of like Quincy Jones’ release of the single ‘I’ll be good to you’ featuring Ray Charles and Chaka Khan and retaining the credit.)

The attempt to conceal their individual identities leaving the sound to communicate saw them utilise the nom de guerre Ogopa as an umbrella title which so happened to evolve as one that audiences would easily memorize instead of the crowd of artists that their stable provided. This led to the departure of a number of artists who had been part of the stable as publicity control was amiss for them.

Ogopa focused their production style on creating a homogenous sound for their diverse artists. One would mentally visualize the Ogopa team as a band or orchestra with different lead singers gracing the moment of recording and performance. This was further reinforced by the CD (Compact Disc) compilations that the Ogopa camp regularly released. These were statements that confirmed to many that this was one homogenous unit. This standardization is what Theodore Ardorno and his Frankfurt school team critique in the popular music industry. The fact that each particular pop record is actually the same and only differentiated in parts that support the overall standardization project.

Their popularity was precisely hinged on the energetic sound emerging from their camp from the late 90s.Modelled on the production team formula like Full Force, Gamble and Huff or C ‘n’ C music factory Ogopa deejays made their entry into the hit making industry with production of singles for artists like Uganda’s Jose Chameleon (whose biggest hit to date ‘mama mia’ was harnessed from this camp.) and Kenya’s ‘Nameless’ whose ‘nina noki’ still remains a club classic all over East Africa.

Their success arose from their Afro Caribbean focus with hip-hop, kwaito (and its sonic ancestor house) and Afro soca overtones, which was popular because it was materials for the clubs. Actually Ogopa hardly made any ballads. In East Africa contrary to the situation in Western countries where the radio and Television stations first deliver hits, the hits begin from the clubs and make it on to radio. Ogopa churned their hits with this in mind. Some classic works from the Ogopa hit factory included:

· E – Sir’s ‘Nimefika’ album
· Red San’s ‘Season’s of the San’ album
· Nameless’s singles ‘Nina noki and Mannerless’ and proceeding work on the ‘On Fire’ album.
· Bebe Cool’s ‘Fitina’ album
· Chameleon’s singles ‘Mama mia’ and ‘Bageya’
· Amani’s ‘Tahidi’
· Mr. Googz and Vinnie Banton’s ‘Wassei(Gitu rai)’ and ‘Say yeah’
· Sylvia Kyansuti’s ‘Votto’

In its wake the sound was a novelty as it appeared to be purely East African and many artists from out of Kenya but in the East African region trekked to do recordings with the Ogopa camp. With time it became apparent that the repetitive production dynamics took its toll as not only did artists get exhausted but many production sectors duplicated this sound. At times it was hard for an artist to rely on the production of a whole album from the Ogopa camp. Their strengths thence became in the production of compilations where they spurned hit after hit from various artists.

Ogopa deejays are actually men from the discotheque as soundman Lucas Bideko was and still is a professional disc jockey who brought his wealth of deejay production to the camp.

The Ogopa sound is based on a conspicuous bass line punctuated by digital horns and drum fills with keyboard interpolations reproduced from computer audio software. Recycled kicks and snares are regular on their audio menu.

There is a lot of sampling employed in the process from familiar songs and the use of hooks that grace the popularity of their hits. A typical production process from them employs a computer keyboard (off and on). They either use the artist’s demo to work the music or the artists submit the rhythm of their songs to which Ogopa restructures and fine tunes. The similarity of their production for various artists served as a distinctive measure to protect their unit. Artistic individuality of the artists then got submerged

The Ogopa concept also advanced the newly found digital production of popular music in East Africa as this team of producers creatively relied heavily on software and samples from digital sources. Jose Chameleon’s tenure at the Ogopa stable was a tutorial in the production trends that he initiated in Uganda after leaving the stable in 2002 at his Leon Island recording studio. The unorthodox way of running their business perhaps offers an idea as to why they are actually not easy to locate. The artists who work with them claim that you only find them through another artist who has worked with them. The chain then continues.

Critics of the Ogopa sound reiterated that the digital instrumentation they incorporated into their production lacked the production finesse of pre-Ogopa un plugged studio sessions as was common with the Sync sound label, Them Mushrooms, Samawati and Next level studios. Ogopa they claim is solely limited by the sonic resources utilized (copyrighted audio samples). However these critics still do acknowledge the market-oriented approach of the Ogopa production camp was significant in their success because they made what people loved to listen/dance to. Artists who have recorded with him placed the average cost of recording with Ogopa at 200 US Dollars for a single. Artists who flocked the Ogopa ‘shrine’ were ‘blessed’ with hits.

Bebe Cool

The appeal of the Ogopa sound (lyrically and the overall sound) was largely restricted to the under twenty-five age demographic simply because the beat tradition caught the club attendance bracket. This frustrated the commercial significance of the records they sold that were mainly club and radio rotations because this group hardly earns to spend on records. The copyright fragility in East Africa also saw massive duplication of records produced from the Ogopa camp.

Ogopa’s wave and its reliance on the dot com/shareware highway was crucial to understanding the Generation X model pronounced by post modernism and further interrogate the notions of popular music as a site for the manifestation of rebellion. The lyrics of the artists from the Ogopa camp mirrors youthful encounters with their world and the world outside their own a little different from issues manifested by the older artists in Kenya.

The Ogopa artists deal with relationships and the economy in a fashion understood by their teenage audience with the lingo and vocal stylization coupled with beats that glues them to the sound. Sheng, which is a hybridized pool of different Kenyan languages with Swahili as central, is utilized by these artists and marks a whole sub culture enhanced out of the mainstream by these musicians. Their gear, the bi lingual nature of their lyrics are a milestone in conceptualizing the global society that teenage Kenya is.

Whereas the pre-1990s production processes relied on lengthy and cumbersome processes of music production, this was reversed with the advancements in technology that the youth in Kenya and the whole wide world whose popular culture is the internet have appropriated in the case of Ogopa (a rebellion against the modes of production that many were slow to abandon). A survey of mail by post would reveal a down turn as a result of the Internet.

While critics continue their criticism of this trend, Ogopa is actually setting the framework for what will become the golden oldies of the post 2010 era. Ogopa’s audience is set to become the next generation of working class that is likely to dominate the purchase of music. The rebellion manifested in Ogopa was also against the economic order which relegated young up and coming musicians to spectators rather that performers because they could not afford and which had become a preserve of older musicians. In fact for the case of Red San, Bebe Cool and Chameleon they hardly got any record deals in Kenya because it was difficult and yet they believed they had skills to penetrate the market. Ogopa and digital technology was there to assist.

This technological appropriation has turned bedrooms into multi track recording studios that young musicians have used to rule the music charts along side their elderly (in most cases classically trained) contemporaries .In fact to older musicians, the Ogopa sound is not only forceful, it threatens the very existence of musicians who rely on live studio performances. These produce hits in three months whereas Ogopa (with the aid of computers) does a hit each week.