Aterere

Original cassette edition of Aterere (1994) by Francis Njoroge & Papi Singh.

I first came to Nairobi back in March, setting time to deal with logistics to leave my motorbike and to begin finding my way into the city’s cultural scene. It was then that I was connected to Bizi, a DJ and music writer who has spent his life in Nairobi. We met on a rooftop in Westlands that has become a new space for a budding music scene.

He is also interested in the Asian presence in Kenya. Not Asian by blood, but his parents met each other when attending university in India. He grew up going to Indian restaurants to meet his parents’ friends. He says it took many years to understand why this was the case.

Bizi tells me about a tape from 1994 that has resurfaced. It is called “Aterere,” meaning “listen” in Gikuyu, and is a collaboration between Francis Njoroge, a Kikuyu from central Kenya, and Papi Singh, a Punjabi descended from the “Kalasingas” who came to build the railroad. An online description from the promoter of the tape says it is recorded in four languages, and crosses worlds while containing the essence of Nairobi’s creative scene at the time.

I get Francis’ contact from a local music shop owner, and Francis invites me to a regular Tuesday evening show that he has at Serena Hotel near Nairobi’s Central Business District. I find him in a black suit, sitting at a piano in the corner with a cup of chai. We start to chat, and he opens up about his background. He is self taught, and began hearing songs in his head before knowing how to play any instruments. He tried to convince his musician friends to play his songs. They doubted his abilities so he learned to play them himself.

“How did you and Papi meet?” I ask.

He tells me they had a mutual friend—a hardware store owner—who said they should meet each other.

“Papi and him would drink like fish,” he said.

“You too?” I ask, chuckling. He shakes his head.

“When we met, we said Asians have lived here for so long, but Africans have never been involved in their music. We wanted to break the ice.”

Francis Njoroge, Nairobi — Kenyan composer and co-creator of Aterere (1994), an early Afro–South Asian musical collaboration.

I expected meeting Francis would lead me to an entire subcommunity mixing sounds in this way. “We were the only ones,” he tells me. The tape took a few months, each of them coming up with one song at a time. After it was finished Francis moved to the coast, and Papi was busy with work, so there was no more.

I’m perplexed by the absence of known others in this circle. “Even within ourselves we’re divided into tribes and don’t listen to each other’s music,” Francis says.

“Why are you different?” I ask.

“I am not making my music for personal reasons. I am making it for the people. I would love my songs to be remixed, and hear how they sound in other languages.”

My mind churns as I listen. Francis continues.

“I don’t want to be known as an African artist, I want to be known as an artist. At the end of the day, I want to make a song people feel. They will not call it jazz, or traditional, or anything. They will just call it a song.”

Original cassette tape of Aterere (1994), released by M.T. Records, Nairobi.

Sahil Desai & Charles Obina

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Archival Note: Aterere was originally recorded in 1994 as a collaboration between Francis Njoroge and Papi Singh in Nairobi, Kenya. The recording brings together Punjabi, Gikuyu, Swahili, and English, blending Bhangra rhythms with Afro-electronic compositions emerging from Nairobi’s urban music scene at the time. The tape has since resurfaced through independent archival circulation and reissue, re-entering contemporary listening contexts decades after its initial release.

A reissue of Aterere is available via Bandcamp

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About the author: Sahil Desai is a writer, sound researcher, and musician tracing South Asian diasporic music across the African continent. Traveling by motorbike, he documents encounters with musicians, archives, and forms of cultural life that often sit outside official histories. His work attends to sound as a site of memory, circulation, and unfinished connection.

About the series: Riding With Sahil is part of Archives in Motion, a BlindianProject archival practice holding writing, sound, and visual work created while journeys are still unfolding.

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Archives in Motion: An initiative of BlindianProject — a living archive documenting Black × South Asian histories, encounters, and cultural exchange.