NGARTIA TRANSFORMS SPOKEN WORD POETRY INTO ROUSING MUSICAL THEATRE

BY Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 20.4.24)

Outspoken as ever, Ngartia Kimathi, the award-winning spoken word poet and storyteller supreme is back.

The co-founder of Too Early for Birds (with Abubakar Majid) has been gone for many months after making a huge impact on the spoken-word and storytelling scene from the moment ‘Too Early’ appeared in 2017. He and his group were right on time (not too early!), being something fresh and new, inspired and appealing to a younger generation of Kenyan artists.

But after several well-received performances, there has been an extended hiatus which we heard from the poet himself is being broken in August when Too Early for Birds will stage their own come-back production.

But last Sunday, (April 21^st), the stage at Braeburn Theatre Gitanga belonged totally to Ngartia, surrounded by a dazzling array of other young artists and professional performers, all directed by Nyokabi Macharia.

Blending spoken-word poetry with contemporary dance, live music, and excellent lighting and sound, it was definitely Ngartia who commanded the centre stage with his vision, verses, and vibrant testimony on the struggles, pains, and possibilities of living in Nairobi and the country right now.

There is a central love story that will serve as a unifying thread that gives the various poetic vignettes a feeling of cohesion and a sense of a beginning and end.

In the beginning, Ngartia opens explosively with a powerful performance on the Word. He covers the gamut of what the word provides; where it is to be found, which is essentially everywhere; who are the word-smiths and why they are all so special.

With this sort of blitz of a word-statement of purpose, we could see Ngartia hadn’t forgotten how to rouse his audience to new appreciation of whatever it was that he was appreciating.

Previously, he had been passionate about Kenyan history and gave us stories like Tom Mboya, but now he is onto new terrain. Moving on with the times was one of the themes, key messages and must does that he shared with his audiences.

But then, as he did this, he also shifted gears and gave a profoundly personal poem on the destructive methods of fear. He effectively illustrated just how lethal it can be, since it can paralyze one’s forward motion in life, kill one’s sense of purpose, and make them feel like they are nobody and nothing, so why not end it all. Fear is mesmeric, and self-destructive.

But Ngartia also shared the hopeful possibility of conquering fear once you realize you have that power within you to resist it, just as he did.

And again, his presentation was eye-opening, and awesome in revealing just how deeply deceitful and dangerous fear can be, even as it was embodied in the form of a woman (Chemutai Sage).                

But getting rid of fear is not complete merely by destroying it in one’s experience once. It has to be re-resisted daily, since fear is very versatile and can take on new styles and shapes all the time. Plus, it can be grabbing others who haven’t heard or heeded his call to be vigilant and to trust one’s self.

It’s with these insights in mind that he arrives in Nairobi where his next spoken-word scenario is on the dangers of living in the city. They are not quite the same as those addressed in a film like Nairobi Half-Life (which will be staged as a musical by Nairobi Performing Arts Studio later this year) where Nairobbery was more about impacting the car-conscious middle class.

What’s happening now is that petty thieves, government officials, conmen, con-women and even conning kids are snatching everything from ordinary people by all methods and means. Their targets are primarily those who walk, rather than ride since they don’t have the means to take either matatus, bodas or private cars.

Then, he gives an impassioned performance on conmen and how they often have a devastating impact on people’s lives.

This is when he spots Empress Msupa (Chemutai Sage) looking forlorn and lost. He goes straight into his charm mode, refusing to be pushed away, especially when he hears her bag had been grabbed. He manages to break through her defences and they fall in love. Bu then their story fades out as Ngartia has many more stories to share before theirs run full circle.

By the end of the show, Ngartia has convinced us the man isn’t just a masterful storyteller and powerful poet; he’s a wise man who’s got prophetic powers to navigate life in Nairobi and life beyond.