The story of Espen Sorensen could be that of any child growing up in an African village. Born in Denmark in 1980, he moved with his parents who worked for an international development agency to a small village in southern Zambia when he was just six years old.
“This was during the economic depression in Zambia, and I attended a public school where teachers were often on strike,” he recalls.
“My parents lived a very simple life, no electricity, we had to drive to fetch water in barrels and I learned to plough with an ox,” he adds.
When he was 15, his parents moved to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and because of his experience speaking Bantu languages in Zambia, he was able to quickly learn Kiswahili. His interest was also drawn to music, and he formed a teen band called Zege.
“We played Jimi Hendrix but I was also influenced by Kanda Bongoman’s Kwassa Kwassa, and Yvonne Chaka Chaka from South Africa.”
This period also coincided with the rise of the Tanzanian urban music genre Bongo flavor. Sorensen was among the artists at the Bongo Records studios where songs were produced and then played on a show on Clouds FM radio station called Bongo Flavor.
It was Bongo pioneer, Juma Nature who first called him Mzungu Kichaa (crazy white man) as a tribute to his ability to write songs in Kiswahili.
Sorensen has used the name Mzungu Kichaa throughout his career, even though it raises eyebrows whenever he introduces himself.
“If they don’t know me, some people will laugh. When I am in Europe people go, “Wo! What does that mean!” and they can’t pronounce the name. At least, in East Africa, people remember the name,” he says.
Those experiences have fed into his new album Fade Away which he describes as a “coming of age” project, three years after he relocated to Denmark.
“I still consider Tanzania my home, my band since 2010 has been composed of Tanzanians, and Nairobi is my second home,” he said while in Kenya last week.
“I am very inspired when I come to Nairobi and I hear a song like the current viral hit Anguka Nayo. Music has to have a social context so it has to resonate with people. If the song resonates with people, then music has served its purpose,” he explains.
His new album is partly about his experiences as a European who has been influenced by the African cultural setting.
“It is also about accepting that your past achievements and successes fade away and coming to terms with that, not fighting it,” he says. Sonically, it is very diverse, with some acoustic arrangements of vocals and guitar or the ukulele, and on other songs such as Fall In love Mzungu Kichaa brings his own upbeat twist to Bongo Flavor.
The opening guitar riff of the album’s title track has echoes, he says, of the soft rock classic Hotel California by the Eagles.
“I was sitting with an acoustic guitar on the train in Hamburg while on tour in Germany and this guitar lick came to my mind. My guitarist played the higher harmony, while I played the lower part and then we went into the studio and added live drums, live bass, live keys.”
He then connected with popular Danish singer-songwriter Wafande, who is Congolese-French heritage.
“His dad was a big fan of mine and whenever we played in Copenhagen, he would make sure there was ugali and nyama,” he says with a smile.
“When Wafande came to Dar es Salaam, I hosted him and we listened to a lot of tracks and he instantly knew that was the one.”
Uhuru, an acoustic track about the universal struggle of freedom from oneself is a song he had written and played in his live sets but has been recorded for the first time, and Follow Your Heart written one late night in his studio in Dar es Salaam is a comforting song for anyone going through a challenging time.
Memories of his stint in London in the early 2000s when he was studying at the School of Oriental and African Studies are encapsulated in London Town. During that period, Mzungu Kichaa learnt rumba guitar licks from Kawele Matimanwa, guitarist for the legendary Remy Ongala’s band, while Kenyan musicians offered tips on benga.
“It is a reflection of London, a globalised city that accommodates African culture. You can hear the African guitar, and all the African elements in the song because this is a fusion of what I experienced in London,” he says.
His parting shot: “I am not trying to make hit music; I am trying to make music that can stand the test of time.”
The album Fade Away is available to stream across all major digital music platforms.
