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Afua Hirsch concludes the series with a look at how art emerged in Kenya in a period of post-colonialism. Subjects include both the spiritual significance of art, and its means to create and reinforce stereotypes.
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00:05Africa, one of the fastest growing regions in the world.
00:10The youngest continent, where six in every ten people are under 25.
00:16With hundreds of different ethnicities and some 2,000 languages,
00:21Africa is the most culturally diverse place on earth.
00:26I'm Afua Hirsch. I've been lucky enough to work across Africa as a journalist.
00:33And now I'm exploring Africa's history through its extraordinary creativity and culture.
00:40I'm looking at how three very different countries, Ethiopia, Senegal and Kenya,
00:47emerged from the shadow of empire in the 20th century,
00:53and are thriving in the 21st.
00:57These African countries are reasserting their identity,
01:01gaining new recognition for their role as cultural powerhouses.
01:05I'm interested in how that's happened,
01:07and how the struggles for liberation in the past have helped shape today's African renaissance.
01:19In this episode, Kenya, a country created barely a century ago.
01:27Where we are standing here was the bad place for Kenya nation.
01:32Where the British spun an idealized stereotype while carving out a brutal empire.
01:38And in the works camp, the detainees would make bricks.
01:41So they were being forced to build their own prison.
01:43Exactly.
01:44Where independence created new heroes and icons.
01:51I'm an African nationalist.
01:53Wanting my people to have their own independence.
01:57Just like any other country.
02:01And an exciting collision of cultures.
02:04Finding creative ways to respond to the past.
02:08As an artist, I think the time for painting beautiful flowers is over.
02:14Kenya has come to symbolize the idea of Africa for so many people.
02:18But there is so much more to culture here.
02:21So many divergent traditions united by a unique political history.
02:26And by a complicated relationship with the land itself.
02:29?
02:30?
02:32?
02:33?
02:36?
02:55Here's a vision that we in the West
02:57tend to think of as quintessentially Africa.
03:03In northern Kenya's great rift valley, the Samburu,
03:06an ethnic minority who are a branch of the cattle-herding Maasai people,
03:11use their bodies as a vivid artistic canvas.
03:18The Samburu are semi-nomadic, and so their art is portable,
03:23a projection of identity and status that moves through the landscape.
03:29Animal blood, tree sap, clays, ash,
03:32the very materials and dyes the Samburu use in their body art
03:36are rooted in an almost symbiotic relationship
03:39with their cattle and the land.
04:00And the other layer, the Samburu,
04:01the Samburu, the Samburu, the Samburu, the Samburu,
04:03the Samburu, the Samburu, the Samburu, the Samburu,
04:04the Samburu.
04:06All these dyes, you can do it.
04:08The Samburu..
04:11Oh, I do this.
04:21The Samburu are always passing through Kenya's imposing landscape.
04:27They see themselves as tenants here.
04:30But others saw the romantic vastness and wanted to be owners.
04:45For centuries, the Kenyan coast witnessed the arrival of adventurers, explorers, missionaries
04:51and slavers all vying for power.
04:54But nobody actually tried to plant a flag.
04:57It was the arrival of the British at the height of their imperial project who would change
05:01all that overnight.
05:07The year was 1885.
05:09The European heads of state had gathered at the Berlin Conference to put some order
05:15on the so-called Scramble for Africa.
05:18Secretly, and without consulting any Africans, they divided up this vast continent into spheres
05:24of influence.
05:25With the stroke of a pen, the East Africa Protectorate threw together indigenous cultures, farming
05:32peoples like the Kikuyu, Kamba and Giriama, fishing people like the Luo, and semi-nomads such
05:38as the Maasai and Samburu, in a new country commonly known as Kenya, in the British sphere.
05:48The first big British project?
05:51A 600-mile railway snaking inland from the coast to open up Central Africa to trade, to transport
05:59colonial officials, troops and resources.
06:15a 600-mile railways.
06:15This was more than just a railway.
06:17This was a piece of strategic power play, so audacious, so costly, that at the time it
06:25hardly seemed possible.
06:26More than any other single event, this railway established British control over the land and
06:33created the state of Kenya, setting this country on a path from which there'd be no turning back.
06:38a 600-mile railways.
06:49Work began in 1896, but disaster immediately struck.
06:54Dozens of the Indian workers brought over to build the railway were eaten by lions.
07:01British MPs, outraged by the costs and excesses, nicknamed the project the Lunatic Line.
07:21Four workers died for each mile of railway that was constructed.
07:26This was a hugely costly project, one which mostly British people didn't have to make the sacrifice
07:33for.
07:37Sir Charles Elliott, the commissioner who presided over the project, quipped,
07:41said, it is not uncommon for a country to create a railway, but it is uncommon for a railway
07:47to create a country.
07:52But not everyone was thrilled by the creation of the new country.
07:59Some Kenyans found ingenious ways to unite and resist the encroaching power.
08:33This is the Kifudu dance.
08:35This is the Kifudu dance, being performed today to keep alive the memory of Mekatalili Wa Menza.
08:41A resistance fighter against British rule, Mekatalili inspires contemporary artists and her people to this day.
08:51Mekatalili was from the Giriyama people who live predominantly along Kenya's coast.
08:59A widow, she had lost brothers to the Arab slave trade and was suspicious when in 1913 the British tried
09:06to recruit Giriyama men into work in plantations or the army.
09:10One day, there was a public meeting where we are standing here.
09:16The British administrative officer then, Arthur Champion, came here with his translator.
09:22He was called Wanjewa Mugaya.
09:24When you say here, you mean right here in this spot?
09:28Yeah, on this spot we are standing.
09:30Arthur Champion said, I want your boys to join the British army.
09:34And she told Wanjewa Mugaya, the interpreter, can you tell your boss to take one of those siblings of that
09:41hand?
09:41He walked there and took one of those six, and you can imagine, the mother hand reacted very furious.
09:49And he took his pistol and killed the mother hand.
09:53Mekatalili also understood what that meant.
09:56And she slapped Arthur Champion to the ground.
10:00She slapped the British officer?
10:01Yes, physically, physically slapping.
10:04And Arthur Champion went down.
10:06And this is a man who's armed with a gun?
10:08Yes.
10:09So what did they do?
10:11One of them just pulled the trigger and killed one of the Germans.
10:17When he did that, the war started.
10:21Mekatalili travelled across the country to galvanise a resistance,
10:26gathering people by performing the funeral Kifudu dance.
11:00So after the dance, Mekatalili would then preach to them.
11:14We have a disaster here.
11:16People have come here.
11:17They are taking our land.
11:18They are taking our children.
11:20We don't want them here.
11:22We stood there.
11:22When we stood there.
11:23We were waiting for them to seize the heart.
11:23We're waiting for them to walk away.
11:29Where we are standing here was the bad place for Kenyan nation.
11:38Mecca Talili has become a folk hero, a Giriyama David against the British Goliath.
11:44Without money or weapons, with her people dispersed, she took the thing that united them,
11:49their culture, and weaponised it for her cause.
11:54The British responded by twice exiling Mecca Talili, conviscating Giriyama lands,
11:59killing around 150 people and burning 5,000 homes.
12:06Slowly but surely, they tightened their grip on their new possession.
12:15And what a possession it was.
12:18To the British, a space more than twice the size of their homeland,
12:23with wild savannah and mountains of eerie beauty, packed with exotic wildlife.
12:30They saw the opportunity for a white settler colony.
12:38Their idea was to use the newly finished Lunatic Line Railway
12:42to encourage British farming of the central mountain plains of Kenya,
12:47the area with the most fertile land, coolest climate,
12:51and with a plentiful supply of Africans who could be turned into farm hands.
12:56The area became known as the White Highlands.
13:01In 1934, the government declared this fertile mountain region an all-white preserve.
13:07Native Africans, in this part of the country, mainly the Kikuyu tribe,
13:11were excluded except as hired servants of their white masters.
13:15Before the white farmers came, the highlands was a haunt of game
13:18and the wild herds of Africa.
13:39The white settlers were invariably drawn from Britain's aristocracy and landed gentry.
13:44People who felt they knew a thing or two about running large estates
13:48and who had the money to invest in them.
13:50They also brought with them intense ideas about British culture and civilisation.
13:56Ideas that took on a new dimension in this landscape.
13:59But thousands of miles away from the rigid norms of Edwardian Britain,
14:03they regarded this as a place that was kind of an Eden, uninhabited and wild.
14:08The perfect setting for adventure and freedom.
14:13This white, romantic vision of Kenya has had enormous resonance and staying power.
14:20It's been projected across the world in literature, film and television.
14:27And by one book in particular.
14:44In 1937, a Danish baroness called Karen Blixen published a memoir
14:50about her life on her family's coffee farm near Nairobi.
14:54She called it Out of Africa.
14:56The book documents the attitudes of the upper crust of colonial Kenya,
15:01who became known as the Happy Valley Set,
15:04the tabloid fodder of the interwar years.
15:07It also traces a love affair based on the real-life fling Karen had
15:11with the Englishman Dennis Finch Hatton,
15:14a story adapted into an Oscar-winning film in 1985.
15:18Out of a land of beauty, mystery and majesty.
15:26Out of Africa.
15:32The real star was the epic, awe-inspiring landscape of Kenya.
15:38The geographical position and the height of the land
15:42combined to create a landscape that had not its like in all the world.
15:47The views were immensely wide.
15:50Everything you saw made for greatness and freedom.
15:55An unequalled nobility.
15:58That book has done so much to promote an image of Kenya as a blank landscape,
16:04a primordial canvas onto which the white nobility,
16:09privileged people come to fulfil adventure and romance.
16:13And the role of Africans in this narrative is minimal.
16:17They've simply existed as accessories to that central white adventure.
16:23Nothing like a nice log fire at this time of year, is there?
16:26Even when you're right on the equator,
16:28in the most luxurious club in Africa, the Mount Kenya Safari Club.
16:35And as you'd expect from a millionaire's playground,
16:37it really is exotic.
16:51Safari culture had been ushered in by the lunatic line.
16:59Among early pith-helmeted hunters, with their tall stories and trophies,
17:04was American President Teddy Roosevelt in 1910.
17:08But it was after the 1940s and the establishment of Kenya's vast national parks
17:14that safari's promise of adventure and sighting big game
17:18fuelled large-scale tourism.
17:20People in search of their own out-of-Africa moment.
17:24And the tourism, in turn, transformed Kenyan art.
17:49A typical Nairobi craft market.
17:51This is where you find the most popular Kenyan art.
17:56Vibrant celebrations of the country's wilderness and safari animals.
18:03Being in this craft market in Nairobi is a little bit like being inside the mind
18:07of a tourist idea of what African culture is.
18:11Even though the people who work here work so hard and there is great skill,
18:16I can't help but feeling that they're often giving tourists what they want.
18:22Things that feed into their preconceptions of images of giraffes, zebras,
18:28wooden carvings that don't have any actual recognisable tradition,
18:32that kind of conform to that vague idea of a mask.
18:36And then tourists come here and buy that stuff
18:38and feel like their worldview is being vindicated.
18:56The expert woodcarvers here are largely from the Kamba people,
19:00who make up a tenth of Kenya's population.
19:04The Kamba art movement began in the early 20th century
19:07and invented what some called a colonial modernist style
19:11that has been eagerly embraced by the tourist market.
19:15Hello.
19:17Hello. How are you?
19:19We make animals. World animals.
19:23Here in Kenya, we have a national park.
19:25We have giraffe.
19:27So they see a big giraffe.
19:30After there, they go and see a big elephant.
19:33After there, there is a rhino and a cheetah.
19:35That's the most tourist things in which they like it.
19:41We can make anything.
19:43But because of our mind, we are put it there.
19:47Tourism likes animals.
19:50You're from an ethnic group that has a tradition of carving.
19:54Can you tell me about that?
19:56And how did you come to be so good at making things from wood?
20:01That's something which I know because that is my grand, my grand, my grand, my grandfather.
20:06When we were colonized, he tries to go somewhere when he was naked, no clothes.
20:15So he tries to find his head.
20:19What am I going to close my body?
20:23What am I going to make?
20:25I make a shirt from wood.
20:26From wood?
20:27Yeah.
20:27A wooden shirt?
20:28Yeah, just to make like this one.
20:30Okay.
20:31He close there and he make another thing to close there.
20:34That sounds very uncomfortable.
20:35So he was, so that he can move because of the colonized people.
20:40So because Europeans came, he didn't want to be naked anymore?
20:45Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:48Highly skilled and popular, these camber carvers make money from tourists and art about the land at the same time.
21:02To the east, near Kenya's coast, wood carvings are literally rooted into the land for a deeper purpose.
21:15The Giriyama people's villages are based around sacred forests called Kaya.
21:21They believe they're filled with the spirits of their ancestors, marked by carved posts that look like human statues, called
21:30Vigango.
21:31Vigango are designed to represent the dead.
21:35Commissioned by the family after a relative dies, they're interred into the ground during the funeral ceremonies to make sure
21:42the deceased is welcomed into the ancestral world.
21:45It's a marriage between art and spirituality, planted in the landscape itself.
21:52The Vigango you can see taking shape behind me is more than just a headstone or a representation.
21:58It's the living embodiment of the spirit of an ancestor who has died.
22:02And as long as the Vigango remains in the ground here, it anchors that spirit to their home.
22:17The Vigango is nearly finished now, and the villagers are using red ochre to paint the body.
22:24And charcoal to mark the eyes and the eyebrows on the face.
22:29Really just putting those finishing human touches so that it looks like the person that it is.
22:39It's a very beautiful place.
23:16It's a law of traditional, or a hundred years ago, culture.
23:26Is the spirit of your ancestor in the Kigango?
23:29Yeah.
23:31What is the purpose of the Kigango?
23:33I took a very respectful of him, and it's a sort of magret to pull things, to bring good
23:45things to you.
23:47You do it, Kigango for him, and he release good things to approach you.
23:54When you made the Kigango, did good things happen?
23:57When I put that Kigango, after six months, I managed to build this house, because my
24:05work, harvest, treatment, it was paying well, well.
24:12So it brought you prosperity.
24:14Yeah.
24:14So it really changed your life.
24:16I changed.
24:17Sometimes, these traditions have brought the wrong kind of attention.
24:23Unfortunately for the Giriama, over decades, thieves and unscrupulous dealers have targeted
24:28Kigango, uprooting them to be sold to Kenya's booming tourist market.
24:33Only now are some of the Kigango being successfully repatriated from the private collections and
24:39public museums, where they've ended up all over the world.
24:43If somebody came and took this Kigango away to sell it, what do you think would happen
24:47to the person?
25:09Do you think this Kigango will be here for a long time?
25:25There's been a real trade in Vigangos over the past century or so, and I can see why people
25:29value them.
25:30But when you understand what they mean in this culture, they're so much more than an interesting
25:35piece of art.
25:36But they're inhabited by the spirit of an ancestor, and their purpose is to anchor that
25:42spirit to their home here.
25:44So the idea of taking them away and trading them for money is a violation of everything
25:49that they represent.
25:53Back in the 1950s, Kenyan resistance to the violations of colonialism was mounting.
25:59As the British imperial project in Kenya reached its peak, more and more Kenyans were being
26:05excluded from their own land and being forced to work for white farmers.
26:11Just how serious is the security position in your area of Kenya at the moment?
26:16There has been this build-up of hatred engendered by various, I should say, African subversive
26:26elements in the country that is going on the whole time, and the situation is deteriorating
26:31every single day.
26:34The Kikuyu people were most affected by the White Highlands project, and after World War
26:40II, as a new wave of anti-colonialism swept across Africa, their frustration boiled over.
26:47The Mau Mau was a secret society of Kikuyu who took an oath to attack European settlers.
26:53In 1952, the British authorities declared a state of emergency.
26:59Years of bitter guerrilla war followed.
27:02Hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu were detained or curfewed.
27:07And the British trialled a new tactic, a pipeline, as they called it, of internment camps, where
27:13suspected Mau Mau supporters would be forcefully educated out of what the British authorities
27:18regarded as mental disease brought about by the psychological shock of modernity.
27:29This is Mweru Girls' School, outside Nairi, North Kenya.
27:33But it holds a macabre reminder of the country's violent past.
27:39Tayana Chow is part of a younger generation of Kenyan historians, documenting the internment
27:44sites that still survive.
27:47So the buildings we see here are, they were used as cells to keep detainees.
27:54You can see barbed wire on the roof.
27:56Gosh.
27:57You'll notice in some of the buildings you have a carving on the bricks that says MWC,
28:03but that means Mweru Works Camp.
28:05And in the works camp the detainees would make bricks that would either be sold or used to
28:10build the structures.
28:11So they were being forced to build their own prison.
28:14Exactly.
28:17So you'll notice that the room we're in has windows, but when this was a cell, there
28:23was no light coming in.
28:24So the school has basically carved out the windows from the brick itself.
28:29How many Mau Mau do you think would have been living in a space like this?
28:35From our research sources and our conversations with veterans, we estimate maybe 60 people.
28:4160?
28:4260 people.
28:42In this space?
28:43In this tiny space.
28:4570 people.
28:53This is a torture chamber.
28:56A torture chamber for the camp?
28:57You'd be kept here alone with very little food and very little water for a period of a number of
29:04days.
29:05I don't know if you can see it now, but they would put water, they would fill the room with
29:10water
29:10and you couldn't sit or sleep, so you just have to stand.
29:15That's horrific.
29:18Do people still feel critical of Mau Mau?
29:22Because there was a level of violence involved.
29:24Everyone selectively chooses what they want to remember and what they don't want to remember.
29:29And you have very many factions that say that Mau Mau was, they were savages and they killed people.
29:36You have some that say they fought for independence.
29:38You have some that say that they gave us Kenya as we know it today.
29:43People who were part of Mau Mau, who fought alongside them or who suffered because they were deemed Mau Mau,
29:50were the sacrifices they made respected and remembered once Kenya gained independence?
29:55A lot of them left detention just to find out that their land had been taken, their ancestral land.
30:02So they didn't have any land.
30:05They had to buy back land from the chiefs or the loyalists who were put in place by the colonial
30:11government.
30:11Their families had separated, some of their parents or their siblings had died.
30:17So they came out of detention, I think both physically and mentally, in a very deprived state,
30:25which continued on to independence.
30:29So it was either you abandoned Mau Mau or you just wither, wither away, yeah.
30:37If this episode of British history seems unfamiliar, it's no accident.
30:42The British worked hard in the 1950s to spin their own version of events.
30:49The British needed to keep the public at home and allies like America on board with their dirty war in
30:56Kenya.
30:57They turned to cinema in its golden age to do that job.
31:02A series of starry, big-budget feature films were made and released during the insurgency.
31:08Today, these African westerns are a fascinating, forgotten window on the propaganda war in the twilight years of empire.
31:18Here's one example, Simba.
31:21In Simba, Dirk Bogard plays a character full of doubt and distrust about Kenya,
31:27as the brother of a British farmer who has been murdered by the Mau Mau.
31:35Sixty years ago, when the first white men came here, these Africans were hardly down from the trees.
31:40How can they be rational adult human beings?
31:43They're children.
31:44When Mary was six, I wouldn't have let her play with this.
31:49What this scene sets up is a very familiar narrative to me.
31:54Africans are like children.
31:55They can't take responsibility for themselves.
31:57They need to be ruled over with a firm, responsible hand that can only come from white settlers.
32:03And this all comes through the voice of the white farmer who speaks from a position of experience and authority,
32:08having really been out there.
32:10And at the same time, he says this in front of two African house servants.
32:14And in contrast to his eloquence, his rant, his passion, his knowledge, they are silent.
32:21It's dishonest because it's claiming to show some kind of interest in the future of Africans.
32:25But it's not really doing that.
32:27It's about British self-interest.
32:28And even worse, I feel that debate is still playing itself out now.
32:32If you think about the discussions about aid and development in Africa,
32:37it's still white British people sitting in a room talking about Africans as the needy recipients of their charity and
32:43generosity.
32:44That continues today.
32:51There's also a gruesomeness at play in this film.
32:55It was shot on location in Kenya while the real war was raging.
33:01Made with the help of the British Kenyan authorities, it was not just biased,
33:05but according to contemporary press reporting, exploitative.
33:08The Mau Mau initiation ceremony involved real Mau Mau insurgents who were taken from a prison by the company that
33:16made this film.
33:17And shortly after filming, they were executed by the British for their role in the Mau Mau insurgency.
33:23These are people who were performing something to entertain British audiences
33:28and then were executed because of that very thing.
33:32It brings history and fiction together in a way that is so troubling.
33:37And it means that as an audience member, I've now been entertained by something which I know cost these Kenyan
33:45men their lives.
33:48The film climaxes with an attack on Bogard's farm and the murder of an African doctor trying to mediate.
33:58This is a threatening scene.
34:00You are meant to feel afraid of these Africans.
34:02They represent senseless violence, savagery versus the virtues of civilisation and reason.
34:11I think this scene taps into a very old fear.
34:15This image of being under attack, this invasion of violent, dark-skinned people.
34:22You see it in stories about the empire.
34:24You even see it in the way that immigration is discussed.
34:28This idea of being swamped or swarms or floods of people who are coming to threaten peace and security.
34:39This was designed to win people over into the British worldview of the empire.
34:45That it was a force for good.
34:46That it was facing these threatening, violent, senseless, barbaric Africans.
34:50And I don't think that legacy has ever really been challenged.
34:56Perhaps we don't deserve peace.
35:01You couldn't underpin an empire with force alone.
35:04You had to make people believe that it was the right thing to do.
35:09That Britain was on the right side of history.
35:10And that's exactly the role that these films played.
35:15But ultimately, this myth-making was of no use.
35:18The Mau Mau insurgency was the beginning of the end for British rule in Kenya.
35:24The last word would belong to a Kikuyu.
35:27And the land would soon be handed over.
35:32And at last, here comes Kenyatta.
35:34Flown from detention and driven on the last stage of his journey in a police vehicle.
35:45Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu who'd been imprisoned by the British on trumped-up charges of being
35:50a Mau Mau leader, led Kenya to independence in 1963.
35:55It only remains for me to present to you, Mr. Prime Minister, these constitutional instruments
36:00which established Kenya's independence.
36:10Articulate, charismatic, and larger than life, Kenyatta managed to turn this most British
36:16of colonies into a successful, independent African nation and avoided a Rhodesia-style confrontation
36:23with the white settlers who wanted to stay.
36:26Kenyatta wanted Kenya to look forward, not back.
36:29Will you change your policy as a republic towards Britain and to British people here in Kenya?
36:35We have no change in policy.
36:38We stand where we were.
36:41Neutral.
36:43Friend of all.
36:45Enemy of none.
36:49What do you think is going to be the main problem of Kenya as a republic?
36:53You wait and see.
36:56Okay.
36:57Thank you very much.
36:57Very good.
37:05Nothing better expressed Kenyatta's infectiously optimistic vision than new architecture.
37:12Central Nairobi, once a backwater railway siding, was transformed into a teeming metropolis
37:19defined by African modernism, daring new buildings, even heroic designs in concrete and steel.
37:28Kenya's first major contribution to that modernist wave was this building in central Nairobi.
37:34It was built by the first president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, who, in a not uncharacteristic
37:39case of showboating, named it after himself, the Jomo Kenyatta International Conference Centre,
37:46built as a headquarters for his political party.
37:48With its cylindrical tower rising above Nairobi at 32 stories, it was by far the tallest structure in East Africa,
37:57right up until the late 1990s.
37:59Inside, it has a magnificent auditorium, shaped like a traditional dwelling.
38:09The design was by a Norwegian, Karl-Henrik Nostvik, but it's a building particularly suited to the tropical Kenyan climate.
38:17A bold use of concrete in airy, open galleries and terraces, without the windows and insulation you'd need in Scandinavia.
38:26In African buildings like this, modernism was set free.
38:31I feel like there are so many stereotypes and cliches about African cities, and this building is just one of
38:38so many examples, albeit a very impressive one, of how Africans decades ago were already thinking in big, ambitious, modernist
38:47terms about the future, and using architecture like this to realise that vision.
38:54Post-independence Nairobi was an economic magnet, pulling Kenya's diverse peoples into an exuberant melting pot, and they found a
39:04common language in music.
39:08As the city grew after independence, workers from across the continent brought with them different styles and ways of playing
39:15music.
39:27A hybrid of rumba from the Congo, and the folk songs of the Luo people from Western Kenya.
39:34In the 1960s and 70s, it quickly became the unifying soundtrack of the city.
39:50It's a very big band, so when we do practice, everybody contributes, like you come with a song, and then
39:56everybody contributes.
39:58So what's your role?
40:00My role? I sing.
40:01And is there usually one singer, or more than one singer in a benga band?
40:05We are many singers.
40:11Now how are the vocals in benga?
40:13Very sweet.
40:14Yeah.
40:18It teaches people about living with one another in peace, you know, and it teaches about day-to-day life,
40:25and love, mostly.
40:27Very important.
40:28Yes.
40:29Yes.
40:40Yes.
40:41Yes.
40:59Is it something to do with the city and the way people go to work and they want to relax
41:04that help Benga thrive?
41:06It is.
41:06It is.
41:07Because if you see around the people who are here, we have doctors here, we have lecturers
41:11here.
41:12And then after they come from work, they want to, you know, to chill their minds.
41:17So they come here.
41:18When we play music, they go home, they feel better.
41:23You can come here when you're very stressful and when we play like one, two, three songs,
41:29you go home and you're happy and smiling, you know.
41:53It's Saturday night, so you're not going to go anywhere.
41:57No, no, we are not going anywhere soon.
41:59We are there to stay.
42:00Wow.
42:01Wow.
42:26The excitement for the future embodied in Benga spilled out onto Nairobi's streets and
42:32found expression in a very distinctive form.
42:36Like London's red buses or New York's yellow taxis, Nairobi's minibuses have become an icon
42:42of the city's visual culture.
42:47They're known as Matatu, Swahili for three, after the original three-pence fare of the
42:521960s.
42:54Matatus are the way most of Nairobi's four and a half million people get around.
43:02Congestion is a challenge in the city.
43:05Many commuters spend hours in Matatus every day.
43:09Given that Nairobians spend so much time waiting for or sitting in Matatu, perhaps it's no
43:15surprise that they've eventually become part of this city's identity.
43:19Unofficial Nairobi mascots.
43:21They're brash, chaotic, noisy, but they also have free Wi-Fi.
43:26They're entrepreneurial and full of life.
43:28Today, Matatus are an unlikely outlet for creativity.
43:36Drivers need to compete to attract paying passengers.
43:44So they use lights, music, and vivid paint jobs and graffiti, popular stars, politicians or
43:52athletes.
43:52If you think about it, Matatus are really Nairobi's most visible version of street art.
43:59It's just that in this case, the canvas is always on the move, transporting its ideas and images
44:05round and round the city.
44:13Denis Muruguri is one of Kenya's leading contemporary artists.
44:17He depicts the chaotic beauty of Nairobi's street life through mixed media prints and paintings.
44:23I can see your obsession with Matatus everywhere in your workshop, even on your clothes.
44:28Yeah.
44:28What is the obsession with Matatus?
44:30I just grew up loving Matatus and I grew up next to a bus park.
44:36They are more than just a vehicle that takes you from point A to B. They are kind of concept
44:41boxes.
44:42So you find Matatus with, they try to outdo each other with some ridiculous paint jobs and
44:53plasma screens, loud music, performances by the operators.
44:59You could say that the Matatu experience encapsulates a lot of the challenges of life here.
45:04Sitting in traffic, not being able to guarantee your safety, a level of chaos and noise.
45:09So you're deliberately countering all of that negativity by actually actively celebrating
45:15the good parts.
45:16Yeah.
45:16Matatus without passengers and operators is just a shell.
45:21It becomes alive when people come into it.
45:25That's the most beautiful thing about them.
45:42As economic migrants arrived from around the country, Nairobi's growth created new challenges.
45:54Today, as many as two and a half million people live in slums like this across Nairobi.
46:00Almost two thirds of the city's total population, but on just a tiny fraction of the land.
46:13So right now, I feel like I'm giving you your obligatory slum scene.
46:18And to be quite honest, I'm frustrated with the fact that depictions of places like this,
46:23that don't really get to the bottom of what life here is like, are still such a prevalent
46:28way of depicting African countries like Kenya.
46:31This is a difficult place to live.
46:33There are challenges here.
46:34There's poverty.
46:35But it's so much more complicated than that.
46:37There is so much more going on here.
46:39There is such an order to live here that you can't really understand just by looking
46:43at tin shacks or rubbish dumps.
46:47And one of the things that's going on in areas like this is a really interesting creative scene
46:52that's often not what you would expect.
47:14Classical ballet has become a source of self-expression for children living in Kibera,
47:19the largest urban slum in Africa, home, it's believed, to over a million people.
47:28Joseph Kanyenge is one of their teachers.
47:36Were you surprised that people in Kibera take so well to ballet?
47:41At first, at first, I had a perception in my head when I saw, oh, you're coming to work,
47:47you're going to work in Kibera.
47:49I was like, oh God.
47:51But then when I saw how they're moving, it's like, oh, there's no difference from here
47:55and other places that I have an interaction with children.
48:00My perception would change immediately.
48:02It is quite a noisy, chaotic area, but it's as if in this room you've created a very orderly ballet
48:09studio.
48:12I'm surprised how the girls, the girls are the ones actually who calms me down.
48:16Because for me, I can't, I can't deal with the noise.
48:19But the girls, just like...
48:20They're not fazed.
48:26Do they face hardship? Of course they do, perhaps their own hardship.
48:31But you never see it.
48:33They're always happy, they're always coming to school, you see them chatting around.
48:37You see them when you ask them, how do you sit there?
48:39The Kibera is a nice place.
48:40It is a nice place. It really is.
48:46This ballet is a reminder that the narrative of Africans in destitution and in need of handouts
48:52is outdated and unhelpful.
48:55There's a real resilience in the face of adversity here.
49:05Exploring even further beyond the cliché,
49:07we find the very material of the slum inspiring a whole new art movement.
49:17Meshak Oiro is one of a new generation of artists producing recycled art.
49:22A sculptor, he works to upcycle the junk the slums produce
49:26and turn it into something positive.
49:31I have to say, it's a little bit hard to see.
49:34At the moment, this pile of rubbish, it's kind of covered in flies, quite grimy.
49:38I can't immediately imagine its potential.
49:41As you know, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.
49:45So I see beauty in there.
49:47And what gave you the idea to do it?
49:49As a young artist, coming up with the money to buy materials
49:52and not being sure of the market, it was quite challenging.
49:56So that's why it turned into recycling.
50:00Is there an ideological dimension to using recycled material as well?
50:04Are you making a bigger point about the environment?
50:07Yeah, definitely.
50:08Because, like, I'm upcycling what has already been thrown away and trashed.
50:13So I'm trying to give it another life.
50:19How do you pick one chain from another?
50:22They're slightly different colours, lengths?
50:24Different chains make different pieces.
50:26There are pieces where I want really smaller chains.
50:29Like, these ones are small and you can see they have, like, some beauty in them.
50:34This particular one I work with when I'm doing maybe a face or a tiny piece.
50:41And then the other pieces where I have to use fat chains like this.
50:46That's a lot chunkier.
50:46Yeah, a lot chunkier.
50:48So this particular one I can use when I'm making maybe the body and I need to cover lots of
50:55bulks.
50:55I will easily use this one when I'm, like, making quite a humongous piece.
51:02Okay.
51:02Yeah, because mostly I need to cover all the blank spaces around.
51:07You see, this kind of piece, it's aluminium, but also the aesthetic in it is quite beautiful.
51:15I really can't wait to see what you're going to do with all this stuff.
51:34Intriguingly, despite the innovation with materials, Meshack reworks a familiar and abiding Kenyan theme.
51:42The call of the wild.
51:53They say charity begins at home, so my first audience, where I would like the message to go to, are
52:00my fellow countrymen.
52:02And then out there, because out there is just a plus now, but this is our doorstep.
52:07So if it's well here, then I'm happy with that.
52:14Meshack is one of hundreds of artists in Africa's burgeoning recycled movement, using their startling inventiveness to repurpose found material
52:24and create both powerful art and an ecological rebuke.
52:35The world is listening.
52:38African recycled art now has a global reach, featured in exhibitions and prestigious institutions across the world.
52:45And collected by the likes of Bill Clinton and the Swedish royal family.
53:09Today, Kenya finds itself in an exciting moment of transition.
53:19With a dynamic, young population, responding with huge creativity to the challenges of urban life, Nairobi buzzes with energy and
53:27expression.
53:35Michael Soy is the leading artist here, documenting Kenya's journey.
53:41His bold, colourful style holds up a satirical mirror to Kenyan society and politics, and has brought him worldwide attention.
53:52This is your studio.
53:53This is your studio.
53:54This is my studio.
53:56You have a really distinctive style.
53:58Very accessible.
53:59It really hits you and your messages are there to see.
54:03What I try to do is make it as simple as possible to a point where if you stand there
54:07and don't get it, then there's something wrong with you.
54:09Make it as simple as possible.
54:11Yes.
54:12Tell me about this one.
54:14This is a piece I did last year after the election.
54:17There's a lot of Kenyans who were killed by policemen because people contested the results of the election.
54:24All the people who were killed all came from the same region.
54:29So you've depicted bullet holes bleeding in that part of it?
54:32Yes, the bullet holes and then the lines that you see are actually names of the people who died.
54:36Wow.
54:36So this is a name of this person who was killed either in Western Kenya or in the slums in
54:42Kibir.
54:45Michael is painting a series he calls China Loves Africa, questioning the growth of Chinese power in this region, and
54:53asking again, who owns the land?
55:01The world's fastest growing superpower is extracting resources and minerals from Eastern Africa to feed its growing economy, building local
55:10infrastructure here in return for leverage.
55:15In Kenya, the Chinese loaned $3.6 billion for a new railway line, running alongside the old Lunatic Line as
55:25part of its Belt and Road initiative.
55:28Kenyans were hired to help build the line, but almost always under Chinese supervisors.
55:33Many, like Michael, worry about the debt trap in which Kenya now finds itself.
55:39I haven't seen that many artists in African countries where China is now so heavily involved.
55:45Yes.
55:46Critiquing it in their painting.
55:48First of all, it is not a critic.
55:52Really?
55:52A lot of people think that I am criticizing, but it is not a critic.
55:56The question now that everybody needs to ask themselves, how did China find itself in Africa?
56:01China was invited to come into Africa.
56:03By who? By the Africans themselves.
56:04If I talk about this particular piece, all these men, you will realize some of them are very fat.
56:10You understand?
56:10But you've also infantilized them and you've put them in their underpants.
56:13Yes.
56:13They look dependent now.
56:14The reason why I make them fat is because the people who are benefiting from the generosity of China are
56:24not the ordinary people.
56:25It's the politicians.
56:27When you hear of the railway, people connected in government would go and buy the land from the peasant farmers
56:32for nothing, for next to nothing, like a hundred dollars per acre.
56:36When the railway was proposed, they now sold the land back to government for like a hundred times worth what
56:43they bought it for.
56:43Now, the people who are suffering are the people, the citizens who are going to like, you know, be paying
56:48some of these loans.
56:49If you have a 10-year-old kid right now, by the time they're 20, 25, they'll still be servicing
56:54the loans that we got to build the railway to Mombasa.
56:57Me, I will not blame China.
56:59China is doing what it feels is its own interest.
57:05Is this potentially, though, the new imperialism? It's more subtle.
57:08It's potentially even more long-lasting and definitely omnipresent.
57:12No, I think the British came with the Bible first and managed to convince everybody.
57:16And then the guys with the guns came later.
57:19The Chinese are coming with money, you know.
57:20And, you know, when you have a continent that consistently thinks that we are poor, we are poor, we are
57:27poor, we are poor, and come and offer money, then trust me, you will get into whatever corner of the
57:32country you want.
57:34As an artist, I think the time for painting beautiful flowers is over, you know.
57:38I try to do a lot of work that revolves around social issues, things that affect the normal Kenya on
57:43a day-to-day basis.
57:44So I am documenting certain moments, maybe probably for posterity.
57:48A kid sitting in a classroom in 40, 50 years' time from now can get a book, look at it,
57:54and kind of, like, get an impression of what Nairobi was like back then.
58:01Kenya has attracted outsiders too often for the wrong reasons.
58:10Brutal imperial schemes have dispossessed the people while contorting their story into a cliché that shaped perceptions not just of
58:18this country, but of the whole African continent.
58:23Yet here, I found a population and dynamic art scene channeling a creative renaissance, and frankly embodying hope amid the
58:34legacies of a dark history.
58:36A new vision for the future that breaks through old clichés.
58:51David Olishoga explores the incredible journey of the African novel.
58:55Africa turns the page, brand new on BBC4 next Monday at 9.
59:00Next tonight, a period of huge change.
59:02The concluding double bill of Africa's great civilisations.
59:06PETER O söcher is not a religious
59:09community by the way of the African said to do with the African American.
59:13The idea was
59:14that obviously with all black people
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