Category: Pop Culture
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Urgent Lessons For Kenya From Turkey’s Devastation
As rescue efforts following the Turkey-Syria earthquake were thought of as coming to an end, the death toll had reached 44,000 people and 46,000 by other totals. That’s more than a tenth of the total death count in Turkey in recent years, going by that country’s official statistics (whose independence has been questioned) and from…
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The Banshees of Inisherin: When Friends Fall Out Of Love
A part of growing up is realizing you grow apart from people you thought were going to be with you forever. But just like that sweater you got ten years, it’s hard to let go of the rope holding you together. You tell yourself the friction burn is worth it because losing this “forever” person…
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Part 1: I Tried To Chew Muguka And Failed. Now I Drink It.
The first time I tried jaba juice, it was a green-pulpy mess in a shot glass that glued my buttcheeks to the toilet seat for what seemed like an eternity of diarrhea; no end in sight. Thereafter, I resolved to limit my liquid substances to coffee and alcohol, at least their laxative effects were less…violent.…
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Part 2: Jaba Culture Vs. Alcohol Culture
Last year, I happened to attend an anonymous music festival where I was a personal witness to the light-year speed at which jaba juice flew off the shelves. Despite the fact that jaba juice was ubiquitous at these events in previous years, no one ever paid it any mind. This time however, all the jaba…
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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…
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Kenya’s Underground: The Mist KE
Every Friday moon, the basement of The Mall in Westlands is transformed from plain unpainted walls & pipes to an underground watering hole for niche electronic and alternative music connoisseurs and artists titled ‘The Mist’. The Mist is a weekly basement rave providing artists with a platform to host experimental sets from all spectrums of…
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How To Calculate The Worth Of Your Vinyl
So, you have inherited a collection of old records as part of your inheritance from your parents or you want to buy some for your private collection, how do you know what those old records are worth on the market? There’s a place on the internet where collectors, ethnomusicologists, and crate diggers can calculate the…
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How Did Kenyans Listen To Music In 2022?
You should know, I listen to music in two very distinct ways. The first way is sponsored by the art of Crate Digging, to feed my DJ ears (I DJ under the moniker BBYY. On The Island, maybe I should have led with that?) Crate digging is like art collecting (or NFT collecting if you’re…
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Comic Conventions: The 2022 Roundup
2022 is coming to an end and the year’s comic conventions ushered it out with a bang. Nairobi Comic Con on the 19th and 20th of November and Movie Jabber Expo on the 3rd of December came in relatively quick succession, but they both made sure to put on a big show. Nairobi Comic Convention,…