Hip Hop Colony by Michael Wanguhu (review)

Hip Hop Colony provides a grassroots interpretation of hip hop culture in Kenya and the ways it has been embraced by youth as a space for empowerment and activism. Directed and produced by Michael Wanguhu, it traces the Kenyan hip hop explosion and development, arguing that hip hop is a new and welcome form of “colonization” that is shaping youth identity and unity across ethnicity, race, and geographical location.

The film places the viewer in the middle of conversations among youths who, through hip hop, are debating and commenting on topics that shape their world like unemployment, crime, sex, and love. It provides a unique view of how they are using hip hop to communicate, and to energize, inspire, educate, and mobilize one another. Equally important, the producers show how hip hop illuminates a modern, urban Kenya that is closely aware of and linked to the global stage. Also highlighted are generational issues, such as the older generation’s preference for traditional Kenyan music and its dislike of hip hop culture, dress, lyrical freedoms, and lifestyle. At the same time, hip hop and traditional Kenyan music have blended to create something new. Also portrayed in the film is how hip hop has been deployed in politics, as seen in the case of former President Kibaki’s engagement of the duo Gidi Gidi Maji Maji to rally youth support and in the lyrics of musicians like Kalamashaka, who contests political injustices and inequality. The Kenyan hip hop surge makes it clear that the youth are a force that cannot be ignored.

The film also presents a very brief overview of Kenyan history, placing its analysis of the hip hop phenomenon in the context of the Mau Mau anticolonial resistance movement. It presents hip hop as a new form of commentary and youth opposition to current economic and political conditions in the country and also shows how hip hop has brought new ethnic energy to Kenya by allowing artists and communities to tailor and shape it based on local cultures. For example, artists from the Kikuyu ethnic group not only rap in Swahili and English, but also embed their own Kikuyu language and idioms in the music.

The plot of Hip Hop Colony centers on the musical performances of four artists: Harry Kimani from The Grass Company (TGC) Records, Bamboo K from South TGC records, Big Mike (Nanoma), and Kama from Kalamashaka. The artists appear throughout the film singing, rapping, and free-styling, showing through their lyrics, language, gestures, and dress how local artists have customized hip hop to connect with youth by rapping in ethnic languages about familiar places and conditions and sensitive issues like sex and AIDS. Interviews with artists reveal hip hop to be a mixture of many elements, including Swahili poetry, Sheng (a fusion of English and Swahili), ethnic dialects like Luo, Kikamba, and Kikuyu, world musical beats, local Kenyan music (Nonini), and crowd music (Genge). The film also touches on issues involving the music industry’s exploitation of artists on matters such as copyright and royalty standards and compensation, as well as the influence of DJs and the media, which tend to encourage commercial hip hop as opposed to politically conscious hip hop. At the same time, hip hop has created new employment opportunities for both musicians and managers and has invigorated other fields such as the fashion industry.

One of the greatest strengths of the film is the layers of hip hop voices and interpreters that it presents, supporting the claim that hip hop has helped shape a new youth identity and and sense of unity across lines of ethnicity, race, and geography—creating, as the title announces, a new type of “colony.” The first-hand accounts and often impromptu performances of these local musicians at times give the film a particularly raw, unpolished form, which some may view as a weakness but which is also one of the greatest strengths of the documentary as a genre: its inclusion of...