Since time immemorial, whenever people gather together it is the music that supercharges their mind. Weddings, initiation, funerals, graduations, romantic dinners, mothers rocking their babies to sleep with lullabies, even major sporting events like the World Cup finals, are started with music.
Music is and continues to be part of our everyday social fabric. It is the most primal and fundamental aspect of human culture. It is a universal language to humankind and, due to its strong shifting power, it undeniably shapes our behaviour.
In retrospect, Kenyan artists have led from the front in giving us the joy that music carries. For decades we enjoyed a strong dose of raw unadulterated music. Benga stars like Daudi Kabaka shone, even as they educated and entertained their listeners. Them Mushrooms were telling everyday stories through Swahili music in a unique way.
The educational content in their music was unparalleled, and their releases were on a whole new level. Then came Bongo stars that gave love a new definition. Listening to the music of the likes of stars like Nonini and Jua Cali was a joy to behold.
In the early 2000s Kenyans were spoilt for choice. It is rightly the golden era and one can only look back with nostalgia. Tanzania's Christina Shusho educates through her music, which resembles a church sermon, sometimes uplifting Bible verses and directly fusing them to her captivating magical music.
Fast and forward to today's music scene.
Commendably, some Kenyans have found a way to fuse the new and the old to bring out touching content. However, some are clearly missing the point.
Profanity has unfortunately adulterated and taken away the joy previously enjoyed from watching and listening to our native music. Songs filled with lewd lyrics and scenes of girls skimpily are taking over.
Our penchant for nudity and vulgarity is increasingly stupefying. These songs play on our screens at the full glare of our teens and school children. Other songs openly glorify oddities such as binge drinking and smoking marijuana. This inevitably influences the moral code of young growing teens. As a society we are teetering dangerously on the edge of a precipice.
It is hardly surprising nowadays to see illicit music with young girls barely out of puberty wiggling their bottoms and exposing their breasts as video vixens. While some may argue, "their dress is their choice", the beauty of our girls must not be defined by nudity but the strength of their character.
For parents, teachers, the clergy and other caregivers, it is impossible not to worry.
The Kenya Film Classification Board should not allow songs, which are vulgar from introduction to the last word, to see the light of the day. With singers uttering unprintable words and wearing clothes emblazoned with uncouth phrases, we are sending a wrong signal to our teenagers.
The writer is a high school teacher and author
