Her songlines keeps us on track and in tune ...

It is unbelievable. I rarely listen to music, but somehow I ended up otherwise.
Over the weekend, I was attacked by "brothers in arms", who forcefully shared what I had, including that small gadget we call a cell phone -- I hate it and at the moment, I do not have one.

No regrets though. But when I reached my home "The Palace", I listened to music by several fantastic women to boost my wounded spirits. Outstandingly, I really liked one Kenyan sultry singer Sheila Mwanyigha. The song was Tazama Mbele.

"Surely, her music is the voice of (g)od," I reckoned as I struggled to forget the ordeal I underwent while heading to "The Palace". It was time to concetrate on the motivation of this young girl who is full of life, vitality and power.
Alot has already been said, done and sucked from her music. There are a variety of reasons why lost out during the Channel O Awards in South Africa recently: lack of domestic support and piracy.

Ms. Mwanyigha sounds like she looks: what I occasionally mention when it happens.
She could be one of those attractive, friendly strangers with whom it's easy and fun to strike up a chat in a restaurant or library, usually about the book she's reading or whatever's in the instrument case. From her music, she is engaging and skilled when belting out Swahili ballads -- tales of urban romance and distance love. Just as it is a delight to look at her, it is a delight to listen to her.But, there's some emotional stress -- the failed love in abudance -- in some of her own lyrics, where she clevery and wittingly captures behaviour in the society. When she talks about love, trust and bitterness, it is more or less like a messenger delivering salvation to the youth.

It is easy to compare Mwanyigha with Sandra McCracken's , this Nash-ville women whose songs exude confidence without her ascending the podium to preach on the pillars of ethics and civilization.

"Turn all my rags to white, turn all my words to rhymeTurn all the sorrow to shining facesMake all my dreams satisfied, make all the broken things rightMake all the dead come alive" ('Last Goodbye').

Such longings are expressed in humanist values that don't make a heavy load of the torment, fear and hope some see in a crucifix. She instead appear to admonish the youth about the hopelessness and futility of falling in love without plans, loving and hating pointlessly only to end up in drinking holes with 10-cent booze.

After listening to Ms. Mwanyigha, I made a conclusion that entertainment critics and other hapless masketeers who tried/have tried to shoot down her stuff were/are wasting their ammunition and time, and maybe themselves. With a high-degree of honest, since har days as Nikki, the damsel has always told stories in her songs, her own and other people in and outside her life. Though she has truckloads of fans who seem unsure she's of terrestrial origin (no-wonder her beauty), her world is one where the ways of the human heart, intimate behaviour are remarkably well mapped. Lyrics in Tazama Mbele, come from the heart of Ms. Mwanyigha. They tears apart the frustrations in morden relationships, the hopelessness on relying on mortal beings to shape one future and the sad irony of this world and its fake promises of family and happy life thereafter.

"I am singing and writing from my heart now. A lot of things have happened to me and I just want to look ahead without dwelling old memories," Mwanyigha is reported ( by cybermedia) to have told one writer.
From this statement, which if true, potrays a her a a performer of multiple genre, but has lyrically grown out of the slow-burning anger and sudden stabs of an Oyster to a reflective personality, one you are able to sit down and chat the serious music.
There's nothing wrong at all at anger when it's justified and you know how to channel it, but to be "fuelled by anger" as a governing emotion, anger can hide not only resentment and hurt, but the lack of confidence people feel if they're given a perpetual pounding that induces a sense of helplessness.

There is something about Ms. Mwanyigha -- which comes out in Tazama Mbele -- that is appealing. She has developed self-confidence without complacency, a reassuring quality to foster and to appreciate, just like another singer Sharleen Spiteri of the famous Glasgow band Texas.
"When you become confident you can be naturally sexy. Ooze sex and sexiness," Spiteri told an online rag. This but all standards, especially for me, (maybe) a gentleman, is a pithy platitude, perhaps, but only too true to be ingnored. Luckly, I've plenty more time than some people do for singers of both sexes (especially lady-singers) who search their melancholy souls and work the old magic of sharing their bad times and making them easier to bear with the transforming power of music to stretch out a hand to the solitary.

It's reassuring for such sisters to know they are not alone. Apart from God.

In the context of the quote (attributed to Mwanyigha in an earlir paragrapgh), she is like Spiteri who is able to ooze sex and say how not, because she's as pretty as she is, but since she's been through the rough stuff and still can stand up and give orders where soldiers die. (Like General's do).
Spiteri's hit singles on 'White on Blonde' (1997) made the soccer stadiums, titles like 'Insane' and 'Put Your Arms Around Me' ooze powerful emotions but aren't cheerful, 'Careful What You Wish For' 2003) an electronic edge some found experimental, others commercial, which is to say it's mixed up.

"Just be careful what you wish for"

"Just be careful what you hope for,"

"Your wish, it may come true!"

Dissecting the songs of Mwanyiga, one thinks Heather Nova (home) billboard smashing hitsong that not only explains where this Kenyan woman is just a product for Grammy Awards, if only we have an equivalent in Kenya, if only we supported her and if only we bought her music and drop the firewall habit of hiking to River Road.

"(...)'When you let other people tell you what's right"

"When you leave your instinct and your own truth behind" he said.

"That's a virus of the mind.' That's a virus of the mind"

"I guess it's kind of like losing your sight;

"for aSecond you think that they might be right, and it

"Feeds the doubts you have inside, and it

"Almost starts to feel like a crimeTo follow your own rhythm and rhyme (...)

Yeah I'm pretty happy living in my own sweet time I'm pretty happy

"And I don't need your virus of the mind (...)."

Like, Nova, Ms. Mwanyigha has a staggering vocal range -- a little bit confusing for non-music students -- and the emotional reach down into the troughs of our lives -- when love can hurt like hell -- without which we can't know the rolling crests of joy. But with her, and those others, who have taken the time to separate the chaff from the wheat, will surely understand what it means to sing ...

With such talent, it is awful what a revolting industry that is growing in Kenya is doing. Like others musicians, obviously, Ms. Mwanyigha has agents, record labels and ... "bodyguards" all of whom I do not know and do want to know. Such people are obviously there both to promote and to protect them. But what sickens -- or sometimes make me puke -- is the character of some of this agents "of doom" who are to blame for the downward spiral of the industry. Please save me the fraud in Tusker Project Fame... (that is only keen on selling booze the fragile teenagers ... at the behest of promoting local talent.)

Like in Tinseltown, these outlandish parasites earn a living by compiling lists of the direct contacts you can't always reach and then selling them! It's fair enough to protect musicians from mountains of fan or hate mail. That's what forums are for.
But the downside is odious profiteering when the business overdoes it so people with a job to do need to pay go-betweens to reach the go-betweens. I won't. Next time I wanna speak to Ms. Mwanyigha or any other singer -- who manages to sneak into my tiny list of serious talents, I will call them and not depend on this sewage tunnels.
So folks, when you want somebody around who's simply good, generous and gentle on the ear, Ms. Mwanyigha is that kind of woman.