 about the Kenyan music industry. So what's next? That's the question that we are addressing and I have amazing people qualified to answer this to participate in this discussion. I'm joined by Sam and I'm trying not to pronounce the second name because it's hard. I might lose it and also Affam, Affam if I'm getting it right. Alright so tell us a bit about yourselves and you can say your names are getting full so that people get to know you. Yeah I'll start. My name is Affam, Affam Mephela for full. Music producer, sound engineer and podcaster. Okay, music engineer, sound producer, and podcaster. And I'm Sam, Sam Are. Oh okay, Sam Are. Yes, I'm a music producer, sound engineer. It's just different different things but mainly music producer, sound engineer. Mainly music producer and sound engineer but you're also a podcaster, you have a podcaster, yes. Okay great, so we have the right people for this particular discussion. So let's start with the Kenyan music industry. How do you see it from where you're seated? I'm excited you Affam. I mean first of all thank you for having us. I'm really appreciated. The Kenyan music industry is I think it's in a good place. I think even in the past few years there's been people who are actually you know like-minded moving the needle. I feel like this new generation of artists and creatives, millennials and Gen Zs were very bold and yeah I think the music industry is in a good direction. I just wish more young people had more positions of power to kind of just you know shake things up you know get out with the old in with the new, put new ideas in motion and yeah I think I'm very optimistic about the industry. All right, you know some we've had critics, people coming I think for money is one of them. They were saying that there's no quantity of Kenyan music, Kenyan music anymore, that we're being defeated by others, not just him but others too. So what do you think about this? Well I mean I don't necessarily agree with that. I think there's there's a lot of music, there's a lot of musicians but we tend to focus on a few main ones and those sort of carry the industry as we call it but there's so much talent, there's a lot of people who are doing art and doing art very well. So it's just it's figuring out a way to elevate the newer and less known people than and of course having them work with the ones who are common who are known. Okay so when you say find a way to elevate the newer ones because we've hosted we usually host a lot of upcoming artists and it's hard for them you know especially on finances and things like that. So how exactly and you as music producers because you have this power to do that yourself, how do you exactly elevate the young upcoming artists to also get them to that stage? Wow that's a loaded question. We just have to like encourage the youth to get into music. One thing we need is you need role models, you need to see people on TV like doing things that you yourself look and think like you know I can also do the same thing but we need infrastructure. The thing about the Kenyan music industry as much as I said I'm very optimistic is there's also a bit of a lack of structure. It's a bit you know like how do people get royalties how do you get paid for your work and it's very up in the air so if those structures were put in place like in a better way I feel like you know would be able to have more influx of money into the industry and you see now once that happens then you give artists the ability to actually create art because let me tell you releasing music is a very expensive venture you know recording you have to pay the producers you have to pay it to be engineered and mixed and then you have to do a music video which costs a lot and then after that you know you look at the royalties and you know it's been in the news. If the infrastructure was better like a lot it'll be easier for a lot of people to actually do this as you know for a living. For a living because in Kenya most people do it part time especially for the up-and-coming I work this job but because I have a passion in music so I do my music funding it by you know my salary what I get so but if we have good infrastructure that's what you're saying we'll have you know we'll have a better industry you know an empowering one right so how do we is that also a way that we can get people or the world from viewing us differently or having other names also representing us internationally because when you talk about when you ask an international artist who do you know from Kenya who do you want to collaborate with you know it's just obvious you already know that even before you ask it so is this is this also a part part of the infrastructure is it was that something extra that we need to do to also get other artists known internationally because I think we also have other artists apart from the these two groups of these two people that are known so how do we get them to be known let me ask you some I think so partly what Afam said is true we need to create systems that enable the artist to get recognized at that level right there's a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of just building up the artist to get there right now we don't have a lot of those systems and so like for example an artist would do a lot here locally and be known locally but then we don't have a lot to push them outside but partly right of my opinion partly I think there needs to be a lot of artists development in terms of working with so there needs to be a lot of people working with the artists and it's part of the systems working with the artists in order to get them do like promotions and there's a lot of things that go into music that we don't really talk about we a lot of people think making music is going to the studio and then put it out and that's it but there's a lot that goes into it and so it's a lot of those things need to be done but I do feel like we're in a good place though because we've recently had a few what do you call them just like the recent color show that that highlighted Kenyan musicians there are a few musicians I think six seven musicians on there so there's a lot and currently the scene is it's promising because there's a lot more musicians that are now working on not just being recognized here but then they're going global so it's something that's in motion I just think that we probably need to think about it more seriously and figure out how to do that well be more intentional with it yes all right and I love this because it's very positive you know sometimes you talk about the Kenyan music industry and it's all you know we're doing badly and something is to do that but you're giving some light to it and it's actually doing not not so bad so before we gets to your podcast because they have a podcast you as Sam has mentioned that there's a lot that involves you know in the making of music you know the production of music so maybe for someone who doesn't know about this they just know they would they want to be an artist and they want to say so what goes into okay to creating music so you have to get some inspiration now a lot of producers make music digitally so you'll use a DAW which is a digital audio workstation such as FL studio logic or Ableton I use FL studio not Ableton definitely so yeah so you use the DAW you can learn on YouTube now these tutorials to do anything I taught myself how to make music on YouTube yeah so just watch all those tutorials and then you learn so then you make the music you make the beats then you just have to take a risk and send the music to the artist and and be like you know this is a song let's make it together if you have a studio if you have a microphone you can just have them come over record and then after that after the recording process is what we call mixing which is essentially just like post production yeah post production level leveling everything making it sound nice adding effects the usual and then you master and that's also another thing in its own mastering yeah mastering is kind of just getting the music at the appropriate levels for all the streaming platforms so YouTube Spotify they all have different requirements and TV I'm sure you know so you do that but that's now just as much as that's a very involving task that's like 30% of what you have to do because after that now is marketing so you need to market the music yeah doing the videos doing the social media promotion sending it out to your friends and that's kind of where a lot of people get stuck yeah so I love the aspect that now you know we most people think that it's usually the artist who comes with the music to this you know to the producer and say this is what I have but the producer can actually create a sound and send to an artist and we can work together on this yeah all right that's that's something so all right so how did you guys decide up to the podcast how do you guys decide to to start a podcast so we were working at a studio together and some of the conversions that we have on the podcast is conversions we are having like we just have talks about the music industry what we think is doing well what I think is not doing well what we think is think needs to happen and then so that's gently developed into the idea of maybe having it on a podcast and and talking about some of these things now we decided to go with the approach of talking about the unknown the unseen parts of the industry so not necessarily like bringing up artists and you know doing the artist interviews but then now talking to the managers talking to the engineers talking to the people who are behind the scenes working to ensure that the artist gets to where they need to get so that's how it came up it's just conversations that we've been having on our own that we just decided to have everyone else listen to us have okay interesting so you know a podcast on me on anything you know from your talk your podcast has let me just say that to them the podcast did great particularly last year it was named among top 10 podcasts that define Kenya in 2023 and the name of the podcast by the way is the 30% podcast and they'll tell us why so it has been named top 10 among the top 10 podcast that define Kenya in 2023 among top 10 most streamed music podcast on Spotify in Kenya of course hosted by these two okay so what else what are we missing this they are passionate about documenting the Kenyan music industry every week and there's something that is also mentioned here the former you know you have done Lil Miner's latest album Maisha Astana and also you know involved heavily in Nya Shinsuke lucky album in 2020 producing songs such as too much watch watch etc that's you okay so you have that great stuff what do you begin the podcast so okay so the 30% podcast actually that name came from some essentially why we decided to call it a 30% podcast was we found a statistic and I don't know if it's still the same today but at the time it said that 30 to 40% of music in Kenya that's played on radio is Kenyan the rest is international and we saw that like as something that's very disappointing a bit sad like why is only 30% of music that's on the radio's Kenyan and want that to be how it should be 70% if you look at the Nigerian industry they write for themselves you know like they're all about their music exactly they're all about their music they're proud for their music so we want to see that number go significantly higher and we put that name as a old daily reminder that that percentage needs to grow yeah okay all right I love it so that's how you decided and you've had wins you've produced great great people so in the hosting of the podcast you do it both of you right yes and as Sam has said you you host the unseen you know you don't host the artists themselves the people behind you know almost empowering the artist if I put like that the managers and and what what not so what do you guys talk about any of you can answer that okay so basically we decided we have had artists on the podcast we interviewed Kinoti and Ethan Muziki two amazing artists but we are most our approach is to kind of talk to people behind the scenes because no like nobody really talks about the manager who is putting things together the ANR who is also putting things together yeah the talent manager you know the likes of we've talked to until Antonio so we've talked to Maya from keep it pure agency there's so many moving parts in the music industry that needs to be highlighted and for us we just wanted to do it as just to educate like people young people just to know that you know there's so much more to the music industry and there's so much more that you can do because like you come up thinking oh I want to just be the artist whatever but like you can actually be the person who puts other people on and yeah so yeah yeah and to add on that so talking about the sort of what we call the back end of the music industry also so it highlights it and it helps with creating awareness about those systems that need to like especially we're talking about the Kanye Street the systems that we need in order to have Ken musicians and Ken music flourish so highlighting that also brings light to what needs to be done in the back end and that just benefits I guess the whole industry benefits the artists benefits the people doing the work themselves and then benefits the music and art so important conversations to have things that can actually bring impacts in the music industry have you seen anything that has from your discussion from your point that has past discussions outside here in the industry or has cost you know some change in whatever capacity things that we've discussed I didn't completely know yeah it's hard to gauge that but we had an interesting discussion about the whole colors like situation yeah you know so colors came to Kenya and you know that was it was it was such a huge win for us and we were just kind of highlighting the fact that you know Kenians are such an amazing platform and so I guess to answer your question yes we've talked about things and kind of shown that you know Kenian music has the ability to the potential okay so I believe you just change perception there are people view music because you have the power to do that you know for some Kenians that look down on our music so maybe even listening into your podcast changes that something all right so what do you what do you aim to achieve I know you've mentioned the reason you started and all that but what what do you aim to achieve from your podcast and let's say a year or more going on I mean so podcasting is interesting because it's a it's a conversation right so and apart from what we do day-to-day which is like working with artists and developing them it's more we aim to just I guess raise awareness one and then also stir some of the conversation and probably talk to the people who might have the knowledge and the know-how to start effecting change we've talked we won one of the one a good a good conversation we had sorry is we had to talk with Eric Missioka who is a very well-known producer and he's like part of I guess the fabric the building of Kenian music and is he's doing a lot of things in terms of the systems and just trying to educate people also so it's talking to the people who also have change I mean who can change things and it's figuring out how to do it but yeah it's podcasting is mostly just to have the conversation started and to have awareness you know out there and just to pick up piggyback off of that like at the end of every podcast we play music I'm strictly Kenian strictly Kenian and that came out on the week and you know we've actually had like like in the beginning of last year we started like at the beginning of 2023 and we the first artists we played either Z's and then Sophie and Zah we played before the whole thing with Milwaukee and that was cool like so we want to use our platform to put people on to music even before it becomes like a big deal so yeah just sharing music sharing the Kenian music showing that you know this every week there's something new that's amazing for you guys to listen to so it's usually new music that new music that came out like on that week okay that's very interesting and very supportive of you guys especially as music producers how do you how do you how do you see your relationship music producers and artists or how should the relationship be like because now with again with our interviews with artists some say you know we're working I was working with this producer and they sort of didn't deliver or they scammed me you know that's a very common story yeah it's a common story so how should we change that narrative because also that's that part sort of also participates or you know it's part of the process of building the industry so how do you what do you say I think the artist producer relationship is is a very deep relationship it's a friendship you have to have a friendship together first of all yeah yeah I think it's it's a relationship that you have to foster because you have to also get chemistry together you know you can't just like hop into the studio and work with a producer you've never even had a conversation with so more artists need to look for producers who you actually vibe with even outside of the music you know you can talk to them you can have a relationship you have you share ideas and then that's where the magic of making music happens once you guys find a common ground and you know otherwise if you're just working with like a producer you've never met whatever you're likely to get you know the relationship will get you'll get a song after it would just be that so but you know I know the examples of producers coming artists even vice versa to be honest but yeah it's not it's not the norm I feel like the relationship like it's good so what what I'm thinking is that you should have a good relationship yes not just whack you know I have this produce it we're done you know we should have something so that you also understand my style understand what you do we you know we build each other one or the other all right that's interesting so you look like you had something to say so how I like to think about it is I like to think about art as a thing on its own like so I feel like more people here need to make more people everywhere but since we're talking about the chemistry what people here need to make art important in and of itself so what we do is like I'm an artist there's a producer I go give them money you give me a production and I put it out but then for art to I mean this is my opinion for art to mean more there has to be a lot more thought a lot more like a relationship a lot more a lot more behind it just so we can elevate it it gives it it gives it more life I would say so one of things that just make art important to make art think about it be intentional which is a really one thing that I feel like we really need just be intentional about what you're doing the lyrics you're you're you're putting out the type of produce I mean the type of product you want to put out and when we do that I do I feel like it will just make it better but yeah we need to make it more important than just hey I have a song listen to the song yeah that's very true what about finding a producer who's I don't know if producers have their styles like you know I don't know if they do yeah oh you do so yeah the producers have their styles that's the question and should you look for a producer that matches your style for you to get your music out and what style now do you guys then have okay I mean yeah producers have their styles look at this the likes of Kanye West he has his signature sound forever has his signature sound Timbaland has his signature sound and if you're looking for something that fits that mold yeah then that's who you go for so yes as a producer here like if you're looking for you know hard-hitting chap beats there's a producer in this country called cap cap is one of the best chap hip-hop producers right now and that's what you're looking for I would push you to cap if you're looking for gang it on stuff you look like you produce hip-hop yeah like for me personally the only genre I don't produce is like country music you know that's what I'm really trying to produce right now so yeah you just have to have your ears on the streets to know who's producing what you know who's watching now yeah yeah but personal style I produce everything I do hip-hop EDM again get on and be like just everything even country I haven't yet but I think I can haven't yet but I don't doubt I can but yeah it's I but your question was it's important for so for you to have a really good product as an artist it's actually it's two ways about it so you first the one way would be the artist needs to be comfortable with the producer again it's part of that relationship now it is to be comfortable with producer but also the producer should try to push the artist to more uncomfortable areas because that helps grow artists other than keeping them in a comfortable or they do this kind of song and they do this kind of song very well and for the last past time in the past five years they've released 30 songs and they all sound the same so there's also that push to an uncomfortable space where okay let's try something you know let's try you don't have to completely go do something different like again get on artists scenario I'm jumping on country but then just slowly slowly you know incorporate different elements and just elevate I guess what you offer as an artist and producer okay all right interesting what about as we close up on this for producers how do you how do you grow yourselves you know for artists is there be changing the style here and there you know for producers how do you how do you grow not talking you just have to reach out like for me I had a period where I would reach out to anyone everybody who can listen to go in the DMs and Instagram you go in the DMs and you just be like you know my name is Afam I'm a music producer can I send you beats send you the email and then that's how you work and you do that over and over again one person is gonna believe in you and then they're gonna say yeah this is actually really nice if you record with them and then you have a song and then other people begin to see oh wow you actually mean music and then you just keep on expanding your network that way the biggest thing about the music industry networking if you just expand your network you'll be good yeah so networking yeah growth growth as a producer now in terms of like the production itself like doing the producing a lot of people think art is I mean there's this whole general idea that art is just free it's fun it's loving but then you really need to study sometimes internet to go behind the scenes that okay this producer who is doing really well is doing this this one and then learn new things don't be afraid of changing because again there tends to be really quick turnovers in terms of production so for three four five maybe a year sorry a year or two years producer is hot right and then after that his sound is gone so you could very easily get lost but then now as a producer you need to reinvent yourself and okay like future what is happening now what sounds are being used what sort of genres are doing well and then learn how to do those so it's part of the growth as a producer it's not just sitting down and I do this and I'm going to do it well I'm going to do it for 15 years and that would be it okay so when networking reinventing yourself stunning every day all right I think I love that and you can take that from regardless of whatever career you're into yeah so final final words from you guys what you want to speak directly to guys and tell them also where they can get your podcast where they can listen in this is your camera you can look directly to it okay I mean so what I want to say is there's a lot going on in Kenyan music I feel like the Kenyan music industry is on the rise yes I know we talk about the likes of Saudi Seoul and Yashinsky but there are other names that are doing like some amazing things you look at the likes of Xenia Manasse TG Black like if you know you know these are people who are gonna be really really big in the future so watch this space in general like like I said my name is Affam we have a podcast it's called the 30% podcast you can find us at the 30% pod on everything all social medias and you can watch us on YouTube we're on TikTok we're on everything okay and some of you as you say your last words tell us also what's next for Kenyan music industry I just realized we didn't answer that question what's next I think this promise I'll put it that way there's a lot of promise there's a lot of artists doing big things in Kenya and there's a lot of Kenyan artists outside doing big things it's it's up to us now to figure out how to create you know the environment the systems everything to be able to sustain that so that it's not a little bit of a ramp and then we fall flat on our face and that's partly what we do on the podcast is try and talk about some of these things that need to be implemented we try to talk about the serious things in the industry like when things like like recently there was a whole blow up with MCSK and then also talk about the light-hearted things in the industry which we just review music and and you know give our opinion because at the end of the day it's also two guys who have opinions about things but yeah the industry is in a really good place I think we have a lot of people with knowledge gaining a lot of knowledge from outside so it's just really continuing that and being more positive we need to be more positive we need to be more positive about the industry and always be negative about it we're close we're close it's so water by Tyler won a Grammy but look at the producer it's Sammy Soso and he produced the whole of the end of the album so we are very close there's things like that that we need to just keep thinking about and doing and then we'll be we'll be part of the global conversation not just the local one okay we'll be part of the and we'll be at you know Grammys winning awards you know as Canyon artists also represented internationally and producers and producers don't forget the producers that's why you're also supporting you know the other guys in the back end alright that's amazing thank you guys for coming on board and sharing your insights on the kind of music industry I hope you have a picture of it and you have hope if you're someone in the industry it's not just about artists it's about the producers about the managers people involved there's a lot there's a lot of entries and careers and things that you can do as someone who loves music right so yeah I hope you've heard from them they are the hosts of the 30% podcast we have some and our fans so I hope you've enjoyed the discussion you're going to take a short break and then we'll be back with Grascha Mayengi for now enjoy some music