Author: Ras Mengesha
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Who Was Rasna Warah?
From writing pithy op-eds to her wide ranging analysis, to her fiction and nonfiction, nothing will shine a light on who Rasna Warah was more than reading her writing.
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Keeping E-Sir Alive
For a brief moment in 2003, my favourite musician, E-Sir, would come back from the dead. It had been a few months since the news had reached us through the smuggled Palito Scan radio sets we hid from the pervading eyes of the teachers on duty. The news had broken me because I had loved…
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Nine and a Half Short Notes on Faustin Munishi (A Brief History of Gospel Music in Kenya)
1 My mother’s answer leaves me disappointed when I ask her about the musician whose cassettes we listened to every Saturday morning. I want her to say Pastor Faustin Munishi because that is the story I have in my head: my mother, the weekend, chores, laughter, music, Munishi. But she says, blankly, as she goes…
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Necessary Noize: A Mixtape Down Memory Lane (Side B)
It’s the year 2003. We spend all our free time in [Redacted] Boys High School huddled up listening to Kiss 100. Ogopa Deejays have taken over the airwaves. Through the illegally smuggled Palito auto scan radio sets, we listen to E-sir and Nameless’s Boomba Train, Nameless and Amani’s Ninanoki, Wahu’s Liar, Kleptomaniax’s Haree, Mr. Googz…
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Necessary Noize: A Mixtape Down Memory Lane (Side A)
Every origin story has a soundtrack. This is mine. It’s the year 2000. I’ve just sat my KCPE and the whole world is ahead of me. I spend a lot of time at the base where Waruish sells water. Everyone I hang out with is much older except for K who is one week older…
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Thinking of Education With Trio Mio
Late one July night in 2020, I clicked on a link that someone had shared on Twitter. I do not remember the contents of the tweet, but I remember that it was during the pandemic and I had been staying up late because we were on summer break and I was anxious about how the…
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Vinyl Is The Sound Of Friction, Of Rubbing Intimacy
I am in Pereira, a city in the foothills of the Andes in the Eje Cafetero (Coffee Axis) region of Colombia. This is not my first time in Pereira. The first time was when I came to my friends Sara and Stanley’s wedding. The second time was a year after their wedding when I visited…
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Mûrîithi John Walker: An Obituary In Seven Songs
Reverence is recognisable. You see it when it is there, and here, as the MC does his best to calm the crowd, to plead for order so that the show may start, you can see it. Reverence. It’s written all over his face, so much so that even as he speaks into the microphone, doing…
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Write Me A Letter: Just A Band’s Kudish! (The Sound of Soup)
Writing letters to girls was a common ritual in my school. Unless you were a loser, everybody had those writing pads with pink flowers running around the margin, and perfume specifically picked for spritzing your letters before sending them out. The logic here was simple: if the girls will not like you then at least…