Blankets & Wine hosts African musicians over the weekend

Since Blankets and Wine was launched nearly seven years ago (in November 2008), it’s been an overwhelming success and a way for friends to meet the first Sunday of every month and relax while listening to great Kenyan bands along with a range of visiting musicians.

The idea of staging open-air live music events isn’t something new, however. They’ve been held before everywhere from Gynbourne in the UK to Woodstock and Ravinia in the US to countless venues all over Europe.

Nonetheless, it hasn’t been a common thing for Kenya, particularly one that happens regularly. So Muthoni Ndongo (also known as Muthoni the Drummer Queen) still deserves praise for her courage to start the event and stay committed to keeping the whole thing running at Ngong Racecourse every month.

Nonetheless, up until now it’s been a showcase of mainly Kenyan musicians. But this weekend there will be bands coming all the way from Angola, South Africa, Ghana, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt and Ethiopia.

Flown in courtesy of Save the Children, they’ll be making sweet music, but at the same time, they will be here on a mission — to raise awareness of something called the African Artists Peace Initiative (AAPI) which was launched early this year in Addis Ababa by Unesco together with the African Union.

“The idea behind the initiative is to get African artists more involved in shaping policies aimed at promoting peace in the region,” said Nigerian filmmaker Taye Balogun who is AAPI’s media campaign director.

War and violence

“Both Unesco and the AU realised that politicians haven’t been very successful in bringing about peace. Neither has war and violence. So the two agencies decided they wanted to try something new, which is to bring in the best communicators who can most effectively reach large numbers with mind-changing ideas. That means artists, and in this case, especially the musicians,” said Balogun who has been working closely with the Blankets and Wine team to organise the two-day event, when musicians perform on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

One reason Balogun has been successful in bringing African star musicians in Nairobi is because he’s been a liaison between AAPI and a much wider social movement called Action 2015.

The movement involves no less than 1,950 NGOs including donors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Save the Children, and Oxfam.

They are all concerned with something that might seem esoteric and out of ordinary mortals’ reach, namely the so-called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which were outlined back in 2000 by the United Nations with the lofty intention to eradicate “poverty, inequality and climate change” by 2015.

Later this month, said Balogun, all 193 heads of state who are members of the UN General Assembly are scheduled to meet and agree on a new set of global goals.

These will be called Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. Whether that will amount to an admission that countries failed to achieve the MDGs is something Balogun doesn’t know.

But what he does know is that he will be speaking at the UN on September 24 on the wider role African artists need to play in both the peace and policy making processes since it’s clear the politicians and diplomats didn’t come close to meeting the MDGs.

Balogun is committed to the idea of African artists’ ability to raise awareness of the imperative need for peace. He’s proving that in his own artistic work as a filmmaker, currently making a documentary about the Mathare-based band Sarabi.

“Sarabi is a group that doesn’t sing about girls and cars; they sing about justice, good governance and corruption that has to be quashed for positive change to take place,” said Balogun, who in the past has made films for the BBC, Oxfam, Save the Children and Water Aid, among other development-minded agencies.

Among Kenyan musicians that will perform this weekend at Blankets and Wine are Just a Band, Muthoni the Drummer Queen and the Yellow Light Machine.

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