Gengetone, a genre from Kenya whose rhythms are influenced by hip-hop and dancehall and whose lyrics in the sheng language convey unvarnished themes about street life, has recently taken over nightclubs, social media, and mainstream radio.
The indigenous genre is still one of the most popular subgenres in Kenyan pop culture because to a strong wave of young musicians and content producers who have embraced and promoted it.
Genge is a hip hop music genre with added influences from dancehall music, and Gengeton is a subgenre of Genge. In the sheng dialect, genge means “a group or a mass of people” and was extremely popular in Kenya in the 2000s.
It creates an upbeat, dance-ready groove by fusing dancehall, reggaeton, and rap. The lyrics and commentary in the music are explicit and mirror the goings-on in the communities. They are typically rapped or sung in sheng (Swahili slang), Swahili, or regional dialects. The secret connotations behind some of the lyrics used in Gengetone songs help these musicians establish street cred because Sheng is a continually changing language.
The genre’s native roots are important to Nairobi’s upcoming generation of artists. Afrobeats from Nigeria and bongo fava from Tanzania had long dominated Kenyan radio stations and nightclubs. The sexual lyrics and message of the genre make it difficult for it to penetrate the mainstream platforms, which is another factor. All of that changed in 2018 when Gengetone became the first domestic genre to take over the nation’s airwaves in a number of years. Since then, it has gained a large following on Spotify and millions of streams on YouTube.
Watch/Listen to some Gengetone music HERE
