Shembeteng and the Rise of Popular creativities in Kenya
Nicodemus Minde
In the recent few weeks a new form of Sheng is emerging. Sheng is Kenyan street slang which has origins in low income urban settings of Nairobi. Dubbed a Shembeteng, this new variety of street slang, has been described by the Kenyan Dictionary as “sheng words that sound like they are encrypted”. The Kenyan Dictionary is a popular platform that decodes Kenyan popular verbal exegeses. It describes itself as a guide to understanding Kenyans. Apart from decoding the verbal exegeses, the platform is a space for reading contemporary Kenyan popular culture. The platform offers a humorous guide and hidden explanations of Kenyan mannerism and what it means to be a Kenyan away from the conventional. It has been argued that Kenya has struggled in its quest for a national and cultural identity but I believe the everyday lived experiences of a Kenyan constitutes a Kenyan identity.
Shembeteng has been popularized by Jeshi Jinga, a music duo from Nairobi made up of Akasha aka Zack Zedi and Yobrah Kichwa from Kayole. Nairobi urbanities such as Kayole, Umoja, and Mathare have been the production hotspots for popular creatives and language evolution in Kenya. At the height of the Covid19 pandemic, gengetone genre, which evolved from the genge rap — a unique Kenyan hip hop and rap music genre that fuses sheng (slang), English, Swahili and local dialects begun to gain popular traction among the urban youth in Nairobi. Gengetone genre is an indigenization and domestication of hip hop and rap in Kenya. The old genge genre was popularized in the early 2000s. Gengetone infuses reggaeton (A form of dance music of Puerto Rican origin, characterized by a fusion of Latin rhythms, dancehall, and hip-hop or rap) and dancehall music rhythms in a party themed musical ambiance. The music style in gengetone sees artists use a new forms of Sheng that reverses the words in an interesting wordplay that depicts macho-like ghetto masculinity and bravado. Gengetone epitomizes contemporary urban youth identity.
Artist groups such as Mbogi Genje, Wakadinali, Sailors 254, Ochungulo Family, Boondocks Gang, among others popularized the genre in late 2019 and 2020. Individual artists who have popularized gengetone include Gwash, Benzema, Ssaru, Mejja, Zzero Sufuri, Trio Mio, Dmore among others. According to Kenya Dictionary, Shembeteng so far has five ghetto vowels that make up the new lingua franca. These are: Mbata, Mbete, Mbiti, Mboto and Mbutu. You can tell that this follows the vowel system of a, e, i, o, and u. In Shembeteng derivation, the ‘Mb’ is added.
Jeshi Jinga group contends that Shembeteng can also be used to remix English words and phrases. They cite the example of the verb ‘love’. They say, if you want to tell a girl that you love them you can says “Nakulombotove”. If you want to tell someone you hate them, you say “Nakuhmbatate”. For Kayole where the group resides, they call it Kayombotole.
Shembeteng a form of African Popular Culture
Popular culture in Africa as Karin Barber describes, is the product of everyday life and includes the unofficial and the non-canonical. Johannes Fabian, describe popular culture as that that includes contemporary cultural expressions and may be seen in sports, popular music, film, art and even in public transport. Conventional forms of expressions of African popular culture are now been overtaken by new technological forms. New media has disrupted conventional oral forms of popular culture expressions. The internet and social media is enabling a new form of transmission of new forms of popular culture. The rise of gengetone genre of music in Kenya has come with an interesting interplay of lyrical creativity of Sheng which we are seeing in the new form of Shembeteng. Karin Barber’s work The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics: Oral and Written Culture in Africa and beyond argues that texts both in written and oral forms tell us about societies that produce them.
Shembeteng albeit it being at its infancy stages, it explains the constant reconstruction of youth identity through language. Shembeteng is being popularized by social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. PlugTVKe, a showbiz platform often does interviews with the Jeshi Jinga group and shares the interviews on their social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. The question is whether this new form of Sheng will endure. Whether it will endure or not, this hybridization of expression in the form of Shembeteng adds to the adventurism of language which can be seen in popular music.
