Before we perceive its actual centrality in the practice of the city for most nairobians, Tom Mboya Street often appears like a frontier that divides the town in two culturally distinct landscapes. It marks the end of the corporate business district and the beginning of the lower commercial part of town. It's the line beyond which one ceases to see CCTVs, businessmen using two cellphones and enters the frantic Nairobi whereby hooting matatus, shouting hawkers, witchdoctors and varieties of sheng are heard. The divide has produced negative myths that encompass social groups, cultural practices and entire chunks of urban space.Crossing Tom Mboya is a true straddler. Masese indeed speaks the language of both sides with fluent authority and his life, music and poetry synthesises those conflicting identities. On his shoulder lies one of his sweet babies, an obokano that resonates from the iron sheets of the slums to the leafy Nairobi. The city he depicts sometimes on the most prestigious scenes in town is a land where hardship, violence and injustice is daily bread. From his rural childhood he has kept popular folk references which he utilises to inform, narrate and soothe urban life.
"Monday morning I went to town,
I went to town to search for a job,
I met the police. Bakamboria gijana gijana,
Wewe nani, jina lago nani, unatoga wapi, unaenda wapi, can you produce your ID, toa tribers licence na logboog yago ya gutembea usigu. Ati you're innocent? Innocent kitu gani ? [...] Can you buy your freedom ?"
GrandMasese - Monday Morning
