Kilele Summit: Santuri East Africa Continues to Write a Global Narrative

A first of its kind, the Kilele summit was a symposium that marked the culmination of Santuri East Africa’s ten-year existence. It was a week-long international convening that united music and culture practitioners, curators, tech companies, collectives, lovers, and other key players at The Mall, in the heart of Westlands. The well-organized and curated event started on Monday, February 12, and ended on Sunday, February 18. 

I’m reminded of ONGEA The Eastern Africa Music Summit that used to occur around the same time at the Sarit Centre Expo Hall before COVID and their subsequent transition online.

Kilele marked Santuri’s 10th anniversary. Ten years of serving the underground/electronic music community in the region. Santuri began in 2014 at the Sauti za Busara festival in Zanzibar. Incidentally, in his opening speech on Tuesday, Co-Founder and Co-Director Gregory Mwendwa (commonly known as Gregg Tendwa) shared that he was at Sauti za Busara over the weekend to celebrate ten years of Santuri. It is an award-winning community-focused music innovation hub based in Nairobi, Kenya, existing to build a more equitable, authentic, and diverse music industry.

Late last year, the prestigious International Music Council (IMC) announced Santuri as the 2023 Music Rights Award recipient, underscoring the impact of Santuri Electronic Music Academy (SEMA), Santuri’s education wing. Occurring biennially, IMC awards exemplary programs or projects that support one or more of the IMC Five Music Rights. In addition to this accolade, Santuri has partnered with COSMOS, which designated them as the first COSMOS Embassy of 2024, affirming Santuri’s dedication to innovation and experimentation.

Kilele was a symposium on music technology and innovation in East Africa, bringing together forward-thinking creatives and collectives with global music tech companies and platforms. It was initiated by Santuri East Africa and the Études for Live-Electronics team from the Department of Music Acoustics at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. Through the Austrian Science Fund’s (FWF) Arts-Based Research program (PEEK), which funds innovative, high-quality research in the arts, the team undertook a project at Santuri in early 2023, a foundation they built on for Kilele.

There were exhibitions, installations, performances, workshops and presentations, and panel conversations. Santuri’s philosophy has always been to create and share knowledge and resources. The summit exemplified this ethos. Their partners and supporters were: Ableton, the Australian High Commission Nairobi, FWF, Bitwig, British Council, Elektron, Goethe-Institut Nairobi, Image-Line, Pro Helvetia, and Resident Advisor.

The first-ever electronic music symposium in the region was a testament to Santuri’s continued commitment to innovation and experimentation. Tendwa observed, “Our past ten years have been marked by shared value, socio-economic impact, and collective value exchange. Today we continue standing at the intersection of music, education, and technology, witnessing an evolution that started somewhere at Sauti za Busara festival, and a transformation that has shaped the landscape across East Africa.”

Kilele was a celebration of a decade-long journey and a forecast for the future.

The venue, The Mall, is always a fascinating paradox. On one hand, citizens and business owners are going about their day, while on the other, there is a bubbling undercurrent of creativity of youths thriving in their spaces. On any other day, the basement is relatively quiet, but with events like Kilele, it comes alive with activity; from Kilele’s registration table to exhibitors and vendors such as Mbwana Radio Service (Amplifying Coast Music Heritage), Pioneer DJ, Tamasha Corporation, a VR Studio, and Mkhiondo, to people moving from one place to another, and videographers documenting the ongoing events. However, it all transpired in the multiple designated Kilele rooms.

Black Rhino VR hosted music technology workshops; Santuri Salon hosted some conversations; SEMA was used for classes and workshops; with London-based artist Elijah’s Yellow Squares – displaying quotes such as “Close The App Make The Thing” and “Imposter Syndrome Is a Feature Not a Bug” – to welcome you, the “unfortunately named” Slaughterhouse housed SampleBar Kenya – an interactive ethno-musicological exhibit aimed at preserving and showcasing Kenya’s cultural heritage through digitized music recordings, Sounds of Nairobi – an open-access archive of the sounds of Nairobi, and The R.V.E.R. – a pirate radio station embedded with fantasy and science fiction lore, by the electronic duo The Jehovas; FemLab hosted panel discussions and presentations.

Since the Occupy the Mall festival, but I could be wrong, Santuri handles the music played in The Mall’s elevators. As you head to your destination, experimental music and sounds beam ubiquitously. One afternoon, I was headed to the rooftop as some pounding suspenseful music played. Six of us stood in the elevator quietly. Suddenly, slicing through the silence, someone commented to their two friends, “Wanatupigia kelele,” agitatedly.

I chuckled in my head.

The elevators also had the Kilele program, and Sounds of Nairobi and BYTE posters. The rooftop was the Bass Camp, a pop-up networking space for music, sundowners, and food. Other Kilele venues were The Mist, Shelter, Moov Café & Bistro, and Dagoz Soul Kitchen. Collaboration was the summit’s DNA. 

Music, Technology, and Innovation

Out of the many sessions, I attended: the Ableton Push Playground workshop by Kimina, Ler, and the Nairobi Ableton User Group (NAUG), The Ethics of Collaboration panel consisting of Dr. Kahithe Kiiru, Labdi Ommes, Bernt Isak Wærstad, moderated by Wairimũ Ndibu, the Bitwig workshop, joining the great tutor Hendrick Sam’s cult, as he joked, the FemX Female Representation in the Music Tech Space conversation, moderated by Anowa Quarcoo (Sonic Griot) who was joined by Jane Arnison, SHI, Sharon Onyango-Obbo, and Kem Kem, Onyango-Obbo’s experiential Never’s Conduit audio-visual showcase which made its Nairobi premiere after debuting at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, in 2023, Vigliensoni’s high-octane clastic music set at The Mist, BYTE collective’s performance which exhibited their growth since their first showcase last July at the Goethe-Institut auditorium, Nyokabi Kariũki’s listening session on Halim El-Dabh, Egyptian composer, ethnomusicologist, and pioneer of electronic music, Sven Kacirek’s Elektron Octatrack workshop, Kostia Rapoport’s Randomization Techniques in Live-Electronics Performance using Ableton Live presentation, Guilherme Tavares and Amanda Bittar’s presentation about Favela Sounds, an international slums culture festival that occurs in Brasilia, Brazil, NEWF’s talk on composing for wildlife films led by Sam Thuku, Muhamago, and Labdi, Manch!ld’s FL Studio workshop, Mizizi Ensemble’s experimental world-building showcase at The Mist, and lastly, the Santuri @ 10 Showcase closing party at Bass Camp in collaboration with Umojah Sound System, featuring ¡AC!, KMRU, MC Yallah, Sonic Griot, Jim Chuchu, and Santuri Sound System.

Some that I missed include the Signal Flow: East Africa and Global Networks panel comprising Muthoni Drummer Queen, Kwame Safo, Mimie Maggale, and Geraldine Hepp, moderated by Gregg Tendwa, the Tickets, Please: E-ticketing Platforms discussion comprising Andy Lemay, George Gachui, and Dennis Mungai, Mbwana Radio Service’s presentation on the Amplifying Coast Music Heritage project, Philippe Pasquier’s overview of Artificial Intelligence & Music, Emilien Moyon’s Preparing the Next-gen of Music Industry Leaders talk, Victor Munyasya’s Bridging Global and Local Soundscapes in Kenyan Electronic Music talk, the Distribution and New Technologies for Royalty Collection presentation moderated by Selina Onyando, joined by Beth Achitsa and Kim Ndiritu, KMRU’s FRAUGHT presentation, an obfuscation of source materials (sounds, texts, noises, objects), Tim Grund’s Building Live-Electronic Instruments workshop, and Nyokabi and Alex Hofmann’s Live Body Percussion & Live-Electronics performance.

You were not short of sessions to attend. As a friend remarked, it was overwhelming. So much was happening and you wanted to experience it all. 

We learned about the various developments in the music industry, heard diverse views, interacted with different approaches to practice informed by diverse cultural and artistic backgrounds, and explored various musical instruments and technologies, and their possibilities.

As Santuri Co-Founder & Co-Director David Tinning notes, “We are the intermediary and would want those companies [music tech platforms] to come to meet their users and the communities make music with their tools. We thought a platform with the loudest interactions between artists and music technologists would be beneficial in growing this scene further.”

Kilele reinforced the significance of the individual exploring creativity in their own way, being unafraid to journey into uncharted territories. As for challenges presented by the ever-evolving music landscape, they are opportunities. Anything is possible with intention, and an ethos of innovation, education, and experimentation.

Highs at the Summit

Lately, I’ve been listening to a great deal of synth music created using Moog synthesizers. Watching Sven Kacirek teach us about the Octatrack MKII – after watching Jonwayne use it to make beats on YouTube – and the Buchla Easel Command, was such a thrilling experience. In the same way that the high-energy experimental performance by Kostia was. Ableton’s Push 3 is another tool I’ve seen in beat-making YouTube videos. It was delightful to explore finger drumming on it, feeling like legendary hip-hop producers using their MPCs.

I finally watched Nyokabi live. Last year, I remember not forgiving myself for missing her January performance at The Mist; I only found out she was on the lineup after the fact. That night she was on the roster with her friend and peer, KMRU, whom I’d also wished to watch live, and it finally happened at the Santuri @ 10 Showcase.

Speaking of firsts, I was honored to meet the taarab legend, Zuhura Swaleh.

Apart from gracing the stage, Nyokabi conducted a listening session on Thursday morning about Egyptian composer and musician, Halim El-Dabh. It was inspired by an essay published on her website that deconstructs and decolonizes electronic music, titled “On learning that one of the first electronic works was by an African, Halim El-Dabh.” She urged us to listen, refraining from mentioning El-Dabh’s achievements in the Western world. Stating she didn’t want to, she instead preferred we listen to the work and engage with it deeply. El-Dabh intrigued her because of his compositions and being a composer interested in sound. Nyokabi promised that the session was “a first of listening sessions that I’d like to do on guiding listeners through experimental music from the continent.”

Together with the Mizizi Ensemble, she performed El-Dabh’s “Leiyla and the Poet” at The Mist on Friday night as part of their set. Mizizi Ensemble hurled us into a wild frenzy. They turned The Mist into a noise vortex and meditation shrine simultaneously. Booming speakers, reverberating walls, vibrating bodies, floating voices… We relocated from one room to another, experiencing performances from Nyokabi, Kostia, Tim Grund, Hofmann, Bernt Isak, [MONRHEA], and Labdi. Once they finished a performance, they would direct us to the next room by word of mouth or pointing. I am glad I didn’t for someone who had planned to go home way earlier than when I eventually left at about 1 a.m. After rPH’s free-form set and Sam Karugu’s noise immersion.

In their blend of improvisation, choreography, and experimentation, Mizizi embodied collaboration. 

The ensemble was initiated as a part of Études for Live-Electronics. The site-specific performance was a musical dialogue between the unique voices of the musicians and the distinctive visual and auditory qualities of The Mist. They explored their diverse backgrounds within the experimental and playful world of live electronics, therefore decentering convention and deconstructing form. This can be jarring or immersive or interesting enough to pique one’s curiosity, but this is certain, these are musicians who are rethinking performance, investigating instruments, and finding alternative modes of expression.

The following day, their energy was piled on by the zest and moshing hip-hop bangers of MC Yallah at the Santuri Showcase.

Conversations about archiving, culture, and evolution had to emerge. In the Ethics of Collaboration panel, Dr. Kahithe Kiiru spoke on the conservational role of the Bomas of Kenya and their SampleBar Kenya project. Her fellow panelist, Labdi, commented on ensuring her orutu samples are available to the community the instrument comes from. It’s a philosophy she strongly abides by. She reiterated the sentiment during Santuri’s fifth Jadili Session in April last year, on the ethics of sampling traditional instruments. Furaha Ruguru (LaMusicJunkie) moderated it.

Contributing to the Ethical Collaboration conversation, multidisciplinary artist Alexander Ikawah added that language is a critical aspect of sampling. When we sample, we borrow from communities and cultures with specific languages, mostly, languages that carry certain ideologies and belief systems. He offered an example of the possibility of a song being a banger in a Swedish club yet the sample, a traditional Luhya circumcision song, wasn’t even supposed to leave the confines of its village of origin. In addition, he mentioned the need to think about the environment from which folkloric instruments are created. Maybe it’s a specific endangered tree where the wood of the nyatiti comes from, for example. The idea is to interrogate what this means in the context of the conservation of culture and the environment.

During the NEWF (Nature, Environment and Wildlife Filmmakers) session, led by Labdi, Muhamago (Muha), and Sam, beneficiaries of Africa Refocused – a collaboration between NEWF and the National Geographic Society – Furaha, in response to Labdi’s question on whether the integrity of an instrument being sampled should be maintained, opined that the sound of the folkloric instrument ought to be preserved. Ikawah challenged the idea of “original,” referring to the evolution of these instruments.

For instance, the nyatiti, which he is learning to play; his teacher is a purist who plays it in a particular manner but the playing styles have changed over time. Or Labdi’s orutu. Its resonator covering is different from the original ones that used to be made out of monitor lizard skin. Labdi’s is made out of goatskin. She showed us a picture of the supposed first orutu, which she saw recently at a friend’s dad’s place.

Muha used his mbira to emphasize the point about evolution. He noted that the instrument was initially made of wood before using metal bars.

These interactions mentioned above were channeling the essence of the symposium – this dance between heritage and technology, or envisioning heritage through technology, as Mwalimu Gregg accentuated in his opening remarks.

Muha kept urging participants to learn folkloric instruments and join them in wildlife film scoring because they are always so busy creating and touring due to countless opportunities. But besides his encouragement, the entire Kilele summit affirmed creatives to keep creating, imagining, and exploring the endless possibilities of sound.

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Collaborate, Create, and Innovate

Apart from examining the role of technology in music innovation and education, Kilele demonstrated the significance of collaboration. Not only in music but in other dynamics of making such a symposium successful. As for musical collaborations, Kem Kem advised attendees to collaborate with their friends, in the FemX discussion. She underlined the power of this as a solution to awaiting external validation.

Another important point was that we should “create something” if we feel there is a gap. In his Randomization Techniques presentation, Kostia reiterated the principle. He was reflecting on how the Lemur touch technology for the iPad, invented in 2005, two years before the iPhone, was ahead of its time. His motivation is a favorite sentence of his: “Why don’t you build it?”

And building takes different forms. Adriana Telles Ribeiro, Minister Counselor Deputy Head of Mission and Coordinator of Bilateral Themes from the Embassy of Brazil in Nairobi, mentioned the viral hit by Brazilian producer Zerb and Kenyan singer Sofiya Nzau, “Mwaki,” imagining the power of more such collaborations and speaking on the salience of strengthening South-South ties.

Santuri continues to collaborate, create opportunities where there are none, and innovate. A mark of daring to dream.

On two separate occasions, I found myself in front of a camera to recap my Kilele experience. On Tuesday morning in the basement, and on Friday afternoon on the rooftop. I insisted that Santuri turning ten and hosting the summit as commemoration was unmissable.

The symposium provided an exciting learning environment, a space for networking and new relationships, and lots of fun. It should happen again next year. Including more practitioners from other regions and counties, like the Khonjo Kolios, is much welcome. Tinning says they hope to host another one. Kilele intended to be a reminder of how far Santuri East Africa has come, and a signal of where it is going. It has been a decade yet it feels like they are getting started.

As Tendwa poetically captured in his opening remarks, “In a world where diplomacy finds rhythm and shared melodies, where economic growth harmonizes with creative expression, and where technology dances with tradition, Santuri is that guiding note in the symphony of cultural advancement… We continue to envision Santuri as a multifaceted catalyst beyond this conference.”

May they continue to herald.