Swedish innovation seeks to revive traditional Kenyan music sounds

Kenyans can now listen and play digitally sounds from traditional instruments by visiting a gallery or the nearest national museum.

This is thanks to a new technology from Sweden called Music Sample Bar, which was recently launched at the Swedish Embassy in Nairobi.

Before then, many would only hear instruments like orutu, chivoti, bung’o, wandindi or eshiriri at national celebrations or rare traditional ceremonies.

The Sample Bar is the first one in Africa and currently there are only two at Swedish Museum of Performing Arts in Stockholm, Sweden.

It is the brainchild of Hakan Libdo, a Swedish music producer and innovator, who explores the intersection between art, music, science, games, technology and society.

Preben Wik, chief executive officer at Interaction Action and co-founder Furhat Robotics, said the technology is – apart from offering one chance to listen to his traditional instruments sounds (entertainment) – also meant majorly preserve those instruments and sounds that are facing extinction just like animals that are facing extinction.

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Wik was the link between Libdo and the Kenya team consisting of Daniel Mbuchi Muhuni, Peter Walala and Wik’s wife Hillen Helm.

“It took us a whole year to come up with this dhow-shaped Sample Bar that has sounds from the Coast region from the Mijikenda community, due to Covid-19 travel restrictions and lockdowns, but it can take less than that to come up with one,” said Wik, who did not disclose how much it costs to come up with one such bar saying there is no price tag that they can put out in public.

Once the technology is adopted by Kenyan government, Wik hopes there will be eight regions with a music sample bar in the city where one can go and play and listen their region’s instrument sounds.

Speaking virtually from Sweden, Libdo said the technology has been given a thumps up by Unesco.  

“This technology is about bringing new ideas into the world of museums. The future museums should not just collect, preserve and teach, but also inspire and make the objects accessible to everyone. We believe that they should attract visitors to play, explore and remix and this ample bar will help Kenyans reconnect with their roots through sounds and music of their past,” he said.

Sweden Ambassador to Kenya Caroline Vinici said the Swedish Government supported coming up with the Kenyan sample bar with a grant from Swedish Institute

“We have a big music industry in Sweden and the government has spent a lot of efforts in supporting the creative industry. In Kenya we have been trying to work together with the government in various projects,” said Ms Vicini.

She said the embassy has plans to partner with the government through the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Heritage and are in discussions to see how they can have eight sample bars representing eight regions at, for instance National Museums of Kenya(NMK), where Kenyans living in Nairobi can come to play and listen to their traditional instruments.

“We realise that it can help us in retrieving our lost glory realising that our children are losing their native culture,” said Okongo Manyibe, from the Department of Culture under Ministry of Sports, Culture and Heritage.

Muhuni or Mbuch as he is commonly known and who is the founder of Debe Debe Drum Circle, said the challenge is now getting a place to put the sample bar.

How the sample bar works

The Sample Bar consists of a table with four screens. There are two small screens; one on the left and another on the right and two the size of 32-inch TV screens – one in the middle on the table and another display screen facing the player of the music, that shows how the sound effects moves.

Then there are cubes, which when placed on the middle screen produces the sound of that instrument. Inside the table are infrared lights with screens that read the cubes named with music, with QR Codes below them.

Wik said the sample bar has flash disk input, where you can save the music, go play it elsewhere. It also has headphones so that in case there will be eight bars of different regions in a museum room, there will be no interruption.