Mwangi
- Sahil Desai
- 17 hours ago
- 5 min read
I meet Peter—an art curator and researcher—at a going away party for a new friend. We plan to meet on a Friday evening in Kilimani. I’m running quite late, and arrive to Peter sitting with a woman who introduces herself as Stella. She tells me she is managing two local bands: Afro Simba, focused on Migikenda reggae fusion, and Asili Dub, who do dub taraab fusion. She tells me she can organize a jam session for me with them before I leave.
We plan it for the next week, and I drive to Kahawa west, far outside the Nairobi neighborhoods I have become familiar with. Following the highway for some tifme, I turn off and follow GPS directions to a small side street. Not sure where the band’s studio is, I try calling but get no answer. Up the street is a van with “Afro Simba Band” written at the top of the windshield, confirming I’m in the right place. After watching me go back and forth confusedly, a woman comes out of her shop.
“Are you looking for the band?” I nod, and she points upstairs. “You can hear them.” As I take my helmet off I find she’s right. “You can park here, I’ll watch it,” she tells me, pointing in front of her shop.
I follow the music up a few flights of stairs. Shoes are grouped outside the door leading to the source. Opening the door, I find a tightly packed room with stacked speakers, a drum kit, and double keyboard set. Four musicians find space where they can. I introduce myself and find a spot to stand as a microphone is set up.
The band continues to play, and I try to find my way into their music. Starting with the scales, one note at a time. Mixing the long flowing lines of Hindustani classical with the open space of dub is a challenge. I’ve heard some examples, but I think they insist too much on inserting lines directly from ragas. I would like to take on more of the sound of everyone else.
After a while I start to find my way, and we end with me teaching the band the nodes of raga desh to give a chance for reverse movement. The progression is a bit strange to them at first, but we wander to a novel feeling.
Jahm, the bassist, needs to leave, and I propose a food break. Kombo, the bandleader, says we can walk to the nearby Quickmart. As we arrive I ask what they have.
“Chicken and chips. Things like that,” Kombo responds.
“Is there a local restaurant around?”
“What do you want?”
“Anything is good. Pilao, chapati, beans, greens.”
“Oh, I thought you’d want chips or something instead of local food.”
“Local food is much better than chips,” I say smiling.
We walk back towards the studio. I am a few steps behind, and two men on a motorbike come up to me smiling and speaking. I’m not sure what they say, and they drive off after a quick “hello, you are welcome, karibu.” I ask Kombo what they were saying.
“They don’t see people like you here, and they gave you a nickname ‘Mwangi.’ It’s a Kikuyu name, I think.”
Earlier I had asked Kombo whether he had played with any Indian musicians before. He said he knew of a few of them but never played with them.
Perhaps I’m unaware of how strange it is for me to end up in these places.
“Why not?” I ask.
“I’m not sure, I just never really talked to them.”
After a fruitful session, the band suggests maybe I perform with them at a show in a couple of weeks. I say it depends on my travel plans, but become quite keen. Speaking Jahm, he tells me I need to be around for a few rehearsals before the show. “We’ll see. We can choose the songs that work and that you can remember your parts.” The hesitation surprises me after our first interaction, but I make sure I’m around for rehearsals.
In two days together it seems I have found my place. Enthusiastic to play the whole show, Jahm says the first set definitely works, but the second one is iffy. I’m slightly disappointed, but still excited to have an opportunity to perform with them.
On the day of the show we meet at the venue a few hours before to go through sound check, and then relax before people arrive. I’ve become comfortable with songs from the first of the two sets, having worked out which flute scale fits each song. I don’t have my parts memorized, but even with the giddiness of performance, familiar patterns emerge as I flow into each piece. After my contribution is finished, I am free to mingle with the crowd.
“When Jahm told me about the flautist I assumed you’d be a white guy,” says a man who seems to share my roots. He is excited by the traditional instrument.
In a conversation with another woman, I say I am not sure why there isn’t more mixing like this. “There are plenty of better flautists than me around,” I say.
“Your strengths are clearly not just your instrument proficiency,” she says.
Joao, another friend of the band, asks about how I started playing with them. I tell him about our chance meeting, and few rehearsals. It was mostly improvised. “I can’t even begin to think about how you would do that,” he tells me.
After the rest of the band finishes, I spend some time with Walter, the keyboardist. “The way you play the flute sounds like taarab music,” he tells me. Perhaps our experience exposes ancient familiarity.
As I say goodbye to the band before leaving, Jahm comes to me. “Let us know next time you’re in town. It would be great to have you again.”
Riding With Sahil is an ongoing series within Archives in Motion, with earlier entries including Aterere, Indigenous Music, and Gravity
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.
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Archives in Motion: An initiative of BlindianProject — a living archive documenting Black × South Asian histories, encounters, and cultural exchange.
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