NGARTIA’S BACK, TELLING MORE KENYAN STORIES

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 15.7. 2023)

It was worth every penny he didn’t ask for. Ngartia is one of those ‘one-of-a-kind’ artists who need no second name to be identified. He is renowned and he’s displayed why he earned that acclaim from the time he first performed with ‘Too Early for Birds’ during the Storymoja Festival back in 2017. Much has changed in the theatre world since then. But one thing hasn’t and that is the theatrical wizardry of Ngartia who gave a mesmerizing one-man performance last Friday night in the upstairs library of Alliance Francaise. Whether it was because the Alliance Francaise didn’t charge the public or the artist a penny for attending Ngartia’s storytelling session, or it was simply that the actor has such a huge following despite having been away from the stage for quite some time, the library was packed to the gills.

Coincidentally, the Goethe Institute which is just next door to the French, also had scheduled a performance at the same time and also in its upstairs library. The only difference between the two was that one was for storytelling while the other was for the play reading of Sitawa Nambalie’s ‘Room of Lost Names’.

BDLife wanted to attend both shows. But since Sitawa’s story was in the paper the same day, and since one can stream the play reading online at Goethe Institute’s Facebook page, we were prepared to watch Ngathia’s performance, especially after he has been silent for far too long. We weren’t disappointed with the choice to watch one of Kenya’s most natural, engaging, and entertaining storytellers, the kind who makes you feel he is speaking to you personally and directly. His first story was a familiar one, the Kikuyu Creation story of Gikuyu and Mumbi and their nine beautiful daughters. It didn’t matter that the vast majority of audience members were well informed about the subject. What mattered was the way Ngartia told the story, how he moved gracefully from side to side of his make-shift ‘stage’, swinging his limbs enthusiastically and sharing heaps of vivid details that gave the theme greater context and depth. Then came the pivot and the crisis that Gikuyu felt. Not that he didn’t love having nine beautiful daughters, but his not having a single son disturbed him immensely. How would the family line (which would have meant the whole of humanity) come into being if there weren’t young men to marry his girls? Then he recalled what Ngai told him to do in the beginning. Ngartia then detailed the procedure, the prayer, and the outcome being nine attractive young men who easily paired up with the girls, and after that, harmony prevailed over Creation. Ngartia gave a spell-binding rendering of that familiar story. But that wasn’t all. He’d written a piece that he wanted to read. It was the story of Them Mushroom, the popular band from the Coast, one of whose members composed the international hit song ‘Hakuna Matata’ but has never gotten credit for it.

Talk about the gullibility of these six musicians. The group had been so thrilled to be recognized by a big music production company that they inadvertently signed away all their rights of ownership and revenue from their one global hit because they didn’t read the small print embedded in the contract they had been handed. Them Mushrooms got hoodwinked not once, not twice, but three times. What’s more, to this day they have never received a pittance from their simple tune that was initially snatched by Germans. But then, even Disney ripped off the Kenyan crew whose ditty, ‘Hakuna Matata’ is the one song most easily remembered from the populist animated classic, ‘The Lion King’. Disney may not even know about Them Mushrooms who actually toured the world singing their signature song. But still, the problem is both chronic and acute. They did well during live shows, but royalties never came their way, nor did recognition for their role in its creation. In fact, Ngartia told the tale of the tourist who asked one of the TM members how to say basic greetings in Swahili. The storyteller’s imitation of the American tourist’s mid-western accent was uncanny as she asked about Swahili words for terms like Hello? Jambo. How are you? Habari Gani. No problem, Hakuna matata!

What we saw on Friday night was that Ngartia still finds his fellow Kenyans fascinating and still seems committed to exploring their stories and chronically them for now and for posterity, performing them in the process.