Work by Kabarak staff and students now appears alongside research from five other African universities in the online showcase of Mapping Africa's Musical Identities.
For the past several years, Kabarak University's School of Music and Media has been part of an ambitious effort to change how African music is studied, taught and performed. The project, Mapping Africa's Musical Identities (MAMI), is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and led by Associate Professor Sylvia Bruinders of the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town.
Kabarak is one of six partner universities. The others are the University of Cape Town and Rhodes University in South Africa, Makerere University in Uganda, and the University of Ghana and the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. Together, they set out to bring research, performance and teaching closer together, and to build a community of African scholars and performers who engage with the continent's older musical traditions in fresh ways.
As the project draws to a close, its work has been gathered into an online showcase on Ibali, the University of Cape Town's digital collections platform. Visitors can browse theses, journal articles, fieldwork photographs and recordings from across the partnership, and Kabarak's contribution is well represented.
Kabarak's contribution
Dr. Ernest Patrick Monte, Head of the Department of Music and Performing Arts in the School of Music and Media, has represented Kabarak as a research partner. His article, The Kenya Music Festival and the revival of Kenyan indigenous music, was published in the 2025 MAMI special issue of Critical African Studies. The festival is best known as a competition for schools and colleges, but Dr. Monte shows that it has quietly become one of the most important spaces for reviving and sustaining Kenya's indigenous music.
The project also funded postgraduate study at Kabarak, and two of its students feature in the archive.
KettyJackline Maina completed a Master of Music in Theory and Composition. Her thesis, From the Roots to The Vibe, looked at how musicians in Nairobi rework folk music into contemporary popular styles, challenging the old idea that the city has lost touch with tradition. She turned her findings into Ĩromba, an original suite in a prelude and three movements. She is now a member of staff and a tutorial fellow at Kabarak, and is pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Cape Town.
Nderitu Kiragu studied for his master's degree at Kabarak on an Andrew W. Mellon scholarship. His research focused on the kayamba of the Mijikenda community in Kilifi County, asking what has kept the instrument alive through centuries of change. His photographs and recordings of kayamba makers and performers now form part of the archive. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, University of Georgia, in the United States.
The showcase also includes further Kenyan studies on how music is taught outside the classroom and on the intercultural music scene in Nairobi.
Why it matters
In many African universities, music programmes still centre on Western art music. MAMI was built to change that by placing African music at the heart of what is studied and taught. For Kabarak, the project has brought international research partnerships, funded postgraduate places, and published work on Kenyan music that researchers anywhere in the world can now access.
“MAMI gave our students the chance to study Kenyan music on its own terms and to share what they found with the world” Dr. Ernest Patrick Monte, Head of Department, Music and Performing Arts, School of Music and Media
Explore the full collection on the Mapping Africa's Musical Identities showcase.
