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Mombasa Roots (or Mombasa Roots Band) are a Kenyan afropop/hotel pop musical group. They have recorded some of the most successful hit singles in Kenyan pop music, such as Disco Chakacha and Kata. Their most famous album is Lele Mama .
The band was founded in 1977 by the "Juma Brothers" from Mombasa, i.e., Suleiman Juma (keyboards, vocals), Saeed Juma (band manager) and Ebrahim Juma (guitar). They were later joined by Mahmood Siraj (guitar and vocals), Hassan Malambo (trumpet and vocals), Tamrat Kabede (drums), and a fourth Juma brother, Ahmed (guitar, saxophone, vocals). The band played live throughout Kenya, achieving a great popularity. [1]
In 1987 they recorded for Polygram their debut album, Msa Mombasa , from which hit singles Disco Chakacha and Kata were taken.
As many Kenyan bands, Mombasa Roots mostly played live in great hotels. This gave them some popularity among European and American tourists and foreigners in general, as well as the opportunity to play abroad (most notably in Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Dubai, and Oman).
In 1999 they recorded a successful CD, Lele Mama , that included some tracks from Msa Mombasa as well as previously unreleased material.
Despite their success, Mombasa Roots experienced much personnel rotation. Most of the founding members left between the 1980s and the 1990s: drummer Katebe relocated to Sweden, trumpeter Malambo left the music business, Mahmood Siraj moved to another band, and Saeed bought a farm. In 1990 also Ahmed Juma left the band and moved to the United States to study as a sound engineer. When he returned to Kenya, he founded one of the first digital recording studios in the country, Sync Studios. Suleiman, founding leader of Mombasa Roots, left in 2005 and went to live in Canada. All these were replaced over the years by a number of other musicians, including Jacky Freeman (vocals), Salim Karama (drums), Hassan Swaleh (keyboards), Edward Toya Farrar (guitar) and Mohamed Khalifa (percussions). For a while, the personnel also included the Nazareth Sisters, a female duet from Mombasa, as well as Saeed Tito, Catherine Wekesa, Adam Solomon, and Susan Kahumbu.
Reggae is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use the word "reggae", effectively naming the genre and introducing it to a global audience. While sometimes used in a broad sense to refer to most types of popular Jamaican dance music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that was strongly influenced by traditional mento as well as American jazz and rhythm and blues, and evolved out of the earlier genres ska and rocksteady. Reggae usually relates news, social gossip, and political commentary. It is instantly recognizable from the counterpoint between the bass and drum downbeat and the offbeat rhythm section. The immediate origins of reggae were in ska and rocksteady; from the latter, reggae took over the use of the bass as a percussion instrument.
Dub is a genre of electronic music that grew out of reggae in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and is commonly considered a subgenre, though it has developed to extend beyond the scope of reggae. The style consists predominantly of partly or completely instrumental remixes of existing recordings and is achieved by significantly manipulating and reshaping the recordings, usually through the removal of some or all of the vocals, emphasis of the rhythm section, the application of studio effects such as echo and reverb, and the occasional dubbing of vocal or instrumental snippets from the original version or other works. It was an early form of popular electronic music.
Rocksteady is a music genre that originated in Jamaica around 1966. A successor of ska and a precursor to reggae, rocksteady was the dominant style of music in Jamaica for nearly two years, performed by many of the artists who helped establish reggae, including harmony groups such as The Techniques, The Paragons, The Heptones and The Gaylads; soulful singers such as Alton Ellis, Delroy Wilson, Bob Andy, Ken Boothe and Phyllis Dillon; musicians such as Jackie Mittoo, Lynn Taitt and Tommy McCook. The term rocksteady comes from a popular (slower) dance style mentioned in the Alton Ellis song 'Rocksteady' that matched the new sound. Some rocksteady songs became hits outside Jamaica, as with ska, helping to secure the international base reggae music has today.
Mombasa is a coastal city in southeast Kenya along the Indian Ocean. The city is known as the white and blue city in Kenya. It is the country's oldest and second-largest city, with a population of about 1,208,333 people according to the 2019 census. Its metropolitan region is the second-largest in the country, and has a population of 3,528,940 people.
As in other countries, the musical production in Tanzania is constantly undergoing changes. Music listened to by Tanzanians today stretches from traditional African music or the string-based taarab to a distinctive hip hop known as bongo flava.
The music of Kenya is very diverse, with multiple types of folk music based on the variety over 40 regional languages.
Third World is a Jamaican reggae fusion band formed in 1973. Their sound is influenced by soul, funk and disco. Although it has undergone several line-up changes, Stephen "Cat" Coore and Richard Daley have been constant members.
Malaika is a Swahili song written by Tanzanian musician Adam Salim in 1945. This song is possibly the most famous of all Swahili love songs in Tanzania, Kenya and the entire East Africa, as well as being one of the most widely known of all Swahili songs in the world. Malaika in this context means "angel" in Swahili, and this word has always been used by the Swahili speakers to refer to a beautiful girl.
Fadhili William Mdawida, often referred to simply as Fadhili William, was a Kenyan recording artist and composer who is most famous as the first person to record Adam Salim's song "Malaika" which he recorded with his band The Jambo Boys around 1963.
Orchestra Super Mazembe was a popular band based in Kenya playing Lingala (Soukous) music. The band had roots in Super Vox, a band formed in 1967 in Zaire and led by Nashil Pichen Kazembe, Mutonkole Longwa Didos. The band moved to Nairobi in 1974 and changed its name to Orchestra Super Mazembe.
Adam "The Professor" Solomon is a Juno Award-winning composer, guitar maestro, and singer. Solomon began performing at an early age, playing the kivoti (flute) and the kayamba (shaker) at village celebrations and festivals. He established his career playing lead guitar and singing on recordings and videos with some of Kenya's most popular bands and musicians, including Joseph Kamaru, Bana Citoyen, Super Kalles, Super Mazembe, Les Wanyika, Popo Lipo of Lessa Lessan, Professor Mb. Naaman with the Nine Stars Band, Kanda Bongo Man, Fadhili Williams, Juma Toto, and the Mombasa Roots Band. Adam's touring credits include workshops and performances with Congolese superstar Papa Wemba and Ismael Lo from Senegal.
Them Mushrooms is a musical band from Kenya, playing mostly Chakacha, some Benga and also some reggae. They are most famous for the Swahili 1982 song Jambo Bwana. The band is composed of Teddy Kalanda, Henry Ndenge Saha and Ben Mutwiwa. They mainly do covers of previously written hit songs.
"Jambo Bwana" is a Kenyan pop song. It was first released in 1982 by Kenyan band Them Mushrooms, and later covered by a number of other groups and artists, including Mombasa Roots, Safari Sound Band, Khadja Nin, Adam Solomon, Mani Kollengode, and the German group Boney M.. Some versions come under different titles, such as "Jambo Jambo" and "Hakuna Matata".
The discography of Boney M. includes 8 studio albums, about 25 singles, and numerous compilation albums. Missing is the 2017 released album World Music for Christmas under the name Boney M.and friends with Liz Mitchell doing vocals on 4 songs.
Safari Sound Band is a Kenyan hotel pop band. In over twenty years of activity, they were certified platinum four times, and their recordings of Swahili classics such as "Jambo Bwana" and "Malaika" are well-known. They have published a number of CDs, featuring cover versions of African evergreens as well as other easy listening Swahili pop tracks. The band consists of six elements. All the band members also sing.
Bob, Peter, Bunny & Rita is a roots reggae album by Bob Marley & the Wailers, released posthumously in 1985, four years after Marley's death. All tracks were previously unreleased recordings by Jad Records Co., Inc.
Merenhouse, merenrap or electronic merengue is a hip hop music style formed by blending Dominican merengue music with rap, dancehall reggae and hip hop. The mix of Latin music, house music and dancehall started in NYC in the late 80's.
Kenyan reggae is mainly a fusion of Jamaican reggae and local ethnic singing styles that incorporate Lingala, benga and Kenyan hip hop.
Natty Nation is an American rock and reggae band from Madison, Wisconsin. Founded in 1995, as of April 20, 2017, the lineup included Demetrius "Jah Boogie" Wainwright, Aaron Konkol AKA Eyes of Moses, Anthony Paul Willis (drums), & Nick Czarnecki (guitar). The group has released several studio albums since their 1996 debut The Journey Has Just Begun..., in 2010 Isthmus (newspaper) named their 1998 release Earth Citizen one of the "top 25 Madison pop albums of all time," writing that "Natty Nation's mix of roots reggae and hard rock proved unique and gained a following that remains today," and their 2016 release, Divine Spark debuted at #3 on the Billboard (magazine) Reggae Chart.
Earth, Roots and Water was a Canadian reggae band from Toronto, Ontario, active in the 1970s. A house band for Summer Records, the group collaborated with several notable Jamaican reggae musicians.
