Shirati Jazz
In the fifty years that he has worked as a professional musician Daniel Owina Misiani has made hundreds of recordings, which resulted in Kenya in several number one hits. On first hearing the pop music of Shirati Jazz, with its strumming guitars and straightforward basedrum beat, one is reminded of a Kenyan variety of Congo-jazz and soukous from Zaïre. In reality Misiani developed his own style, based on benga-music, since the sixties the dominant dance music of the Luo population around Lake Victoria. In the eighties the first albums of D.O. Misiani and Shirati Jazz appeared in the United States and England. Since then this East African pop band has become world famous.
Source: RASA 2004
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Shirati Jazz and D.O. Misiani: a musical legend from Kenya
D.O. Misiani is a musical legend in Kenya. In fifty years he has made hundreds of recordings, many of them number 1 hits in his country. With his world famous pop group Shirati Jazz he plays his own version of the Kenyan dance music 'benga'. We hear deeply entwined bass lines, guitar and melodious song. The bass is sometimes restrained and then bursts suddenly into a jangling pattern. The guitars provide an imaginative commentary on the passionately sung melodies, to which the female members of the band react with sharp, multi-voiced background harmonies and elegant dance movements.
