Jan 5/05

The Kenya Now

Matt Yanchyshyn @ 9:36 am

YunasiTHE MP3 HAS BEEN FIXED

Back in an airport on wi-fi with some time for a quick post.

Yunasi is a contemporary group of six Kenyan musicians, often backed up by percussionists and orchestras of different shapes and sizes. They’re all pretty young - early 20s - and have a really fresh sound that’s very modern and distinctly Kenyan.

Over the last 3 or 4 years their popularity has steadily climbed both home and abroad following several successful gigs on some major European music festivals. They also scored several of Kenya’s Kisima awards in 2003 including “best overall group”, helping to give them a boost in their country.

They have several great tracks, including Kisumu 100 and Ji ogopore. I settled on another for today’s post, Yamala, since it’s currently my favourite driving song. Make sure to turn up the bass on this one - nice production. If you can’t find a Yunasi album, you can grab this track on the Rough Guide’s surprisingly excellent “Guide to the music of Kenya“.

ps- I used to be quite skeptical, but I’ve decided to give these Rough Guide Africa compilations a listen and I gotta say I’m pretty impressed with many of the picks.

Yunasi - Yamala

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11 Responses to “The Kenya Now”

  1. j greasy Says:

    i couldnt open this mp3 on my pc— were others able to download & play it successfully?

  2. aKa Says:

    I could download it, but unfortunatly can not hear it.. looks like the file is corrupted or at least not well encoded… sounds like a Black Dice remix of a hardbeat techno song would sound : nothing to hear, just noise :-)

  3. crex Says:

    Download ok, but it sounds scrambled …

  4. Michael Says:

    Either the mp3 is garbled or Yunasi has a sound that is very very modern.

  5. beatwalla Says:

    I downloaded the mp3 on my mac, but when I tried to play it, the song was quiet, quick and muffled.

  6. Jerrod Says:

    Downloaded ok and sounded fine on my mac, but it’s only like 1 second long.

  7. mattgy Says:

    Sorry about that. Fixed now.

  8. Douglas Says:

    Your link to The Rough Guide to the Music of Kenya goes to the old Kenya/Tanzania compilation. The new Rough Guide is:
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001W30E0/

  9. Sharz Says:

    Hi,am also a great fan of the Yunasi group……I tried to open the Mp3 but couldn’t work…I tried the Rough guide to to theMusic of Kenya and it made me confused…

  10. Matt Yanchyshyn Says:

    Sharz,

    Music is available for a limited time only. Once and a while I accept requests for re-posts - keep reading and once you see an announcement you can make a request.

    Cheers,
    Matt

  11. Martin Says:

    you can download 2 albums from here http://www.yunasi.com

    did you know yunasi have just won the bbc world service global talent contest ‘the next big thing’?

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