Manu Dibango Serenades at the Koroga Festival May 2016 Edition

The Koroga Festival is one of the few events that is permanently marked on my calendar. I love everything about the event and look forward to see which artiste will be headlining every edition. The March 2016 edition was headlined by Koffi Olomide and was epic! When Capital FM announced that the 2016 Koroga edition would be headlined by Manu Dibango, I was pretty excited coz I’m a huge fan.

Nairobi weather has been quite terrible of late, with thunder storms and flooding making life uncomfortable for a lot of us. The day before (Saturday), it had rained with a vengeance (honestly, it seemed like the sky was angry about something) and of course like clockwork, Nairobi flooded. I woke up hoping the sun would shine on Sunday morning so the grounds at Arboretum would have time to dry up and that it wouldn’t rain during the festival. Thankfully, both of those things happened.

I arrived early (around 2pm) coz I wanted to get seating at the front. I was smart enough to rock ngomas as I found the grounds were still marshy. The smartest people however, rocked gumboots. I must compliment some of the gumboots I saw – who says you can’t be stylish in gumboots? The ambiance was chill with people still streaming in and music by the DJ playing in the background.

I bumped into some familiar faces and hanged with them as I waited for the rest of the crew to show up. The great thing about arriving early is that there’s no hassle when it comes to getting food and drinks. Also, for once I managed to get a very comfortable bench to sit on.

The first act on stage was Edward Parseen and the Different Faces Band. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing them live before and they are fantastic. They put on quite the show with appearances by Kaz as well as June Gachui. These ladies are so underrated in my opinion. My favourite part of the band’s set was their tribute to Prince, Papa Wemba and Billy Paul.

The second act was the sultry Maurice Kirya. Let’s just say when he got on stage, there was a shift in the atmosphere. There were screams and the dancefloor quickly filled. The man is an energetic performer and entertained with a couple of his hits. I was hoping he’d perform my favouorite, ‘The Blue Dress Song’ and he played an acoustic version. I had never seen Maurice live before this, but he did a great job and wouldn’t mind seeing him again.

Finally, the man we had all been waiting for came on stage. Manu Dibango is a legend for a reason. He is truly phenomenal and he plays the kind of music that gives you goosebumps. After calling for a moment of silence in honour of the late Papa Wemba, he kicked off his set. Backed by his Soul Makossa Band, the 82 year old (still can’t believe this) belted out his hits including his most famous one, ‘Soul Makossa’. His BGVs were something else. I still have trouble believing there were only two ladies up on that stage. The higlight was when he performed my favourite, ‘Soul Makossa’. I still, up to today, don’t know if the lyyrics are, ‘ma-ma-se ma-ma-sa ma-ma-ku-sa’.

We danced – me in my ngomas and everyone else in their gumboots and it was glorious. l definitely wouldn’t mind seeing Manu Dibango again in concert. He’s worth it. I’m already counting down to the next Koroga and hoping the headliner is just as fantastic.