- Azziad and Mtumba man, among others, are a few examples of those basking in the limelight as result of their creative ventures.
- However, the road to stardom is also marked by pitfalls of betrayal and unfulfilled promises.
Image: FILE
What if we imagined that life is like music? That it has an opening – the moment when a certain melody, a certain harmony is introduced to the listener’s ears.
There is also the peak – the golden moment of art – the climax when a certain uniformity of composition emerges – the period when everything begins to make sense.
Finally, there is the anti-climax – the moment the beat slows down, there’s a change of tune – in some compositions, it could be either positive or negative – in life, it is the lows after the highs, the darkness after the limelight.
What if we also imagined it is the same case with the digital age? Arguably, this is an age marked by profound engagement with social media amongst the Millennials and Generation Z.
On such apps as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and, lately, TikTok, an anonymous person, a nobody, in street parlance, a ‘hustler’ is always a post away, a tweet away, a video away from overnight fame and massive fortune.
We have to emphasise here that most of the times, short and hilarious videos always win the day. But I will come to that later.
However, like the analogy above, as fame and fortune come fast – that’s what we called the climax, there is also a high probability of betrayal and unfulfilled promises by corporates and politicians and all manner of ‘flamboyant’ figures in this country who masquerade as the sole saviours of youth – that’s what we called the anti-climax.
This article will trace the stories of six Kenyans who have instantly become household names among a particular segment of the population through (their) videos borne out of passion and creativity (Azziad Nasenya and Mtumba man), sheer chance (Ntakufinya duo) and lastly, a dose of culinary humour (Ugali man).
Michel de Certeau describes the above phenomenon in his classic book, The Practice of Everyday Life as the ways in which the ‘marginalised’ groups deploy “silent technologies” to challenge “the dominant cultural economy in order to adapt it to their own interests and their own rules.”
Azziad Nasenya
According to her Wikipedia profile, Azziad describes herself as a Tiktok queen, Kenyan actress and content creator, among other titles.
However, contrary to social media hype which is often full of propaganda and lies and badmouthing of celebrities, before fame, Azziad was busy – in the shadows – polishing her craft.
She was active in theatre in her high school days, participating in stage plays. The lesson for the digital generation here is that hard work and passion are often rewarded. Obviously, it takes hard years filled with fears and doubts and tears, but at some point, the sun will always rise.
Azziad’s crowning moment came in 2019.
Mejja and Femi One had just released their club banger “Utawezana”, a major hit that sent shock waves because of its sexual undertones that the then Kenya Film Classifications Board CEO Ezekiel Mutua called for its immediate ban.
Azziad grabbed the opportunity and shot a video of herself gyrating to the song and posted it on her TikTok account. We now know it went viral. We also know that she instantly became famous with a massive fortune to boot.
However, Azziad’s fame did not come without its fair share of controversies when a section of fans criticised Femi One for not giving her enough credit setting off a bitter exchange online.
Ntakufinya duo
The case of these two ordinary men is that of life imitating art.
In the sprawling Mukuru kwa Reuben slums in Industrial Area, with its iron sheet shanties and narrow paths choked with mud and sewage and a crowd of people always on the move, survival here is always about wits and persistence. To survive, you have to beat the law at its own game.
The revelation of some of those survival tactics on live TV (K24), and the potential consequence of making such damning disclosures in a tense scene that involved Charles Musyoka (the alleged snitch) and Aaron Matendechere (the would-be punisher) would have passed for any normal exchange between residents living in a government-neglected neighbourhood. And it did pass.
But eight years later, Kenyans came back to the video with a new sense of insight – the apparent humour of Matendechere’s threats of ‘ntakufinya’ and Musyoka’s daring response, ‘finya’.
While the context of the televised exchange was real, exposing the precarity of slum life amongst its own victims, fame and fortune came knocking on the doors of the two men.
The video started trending on different social media platforms followed by calls on influential celebrities to help uplift the lives of the two men.
July this year, Jalang’o (real name Felix Odiwuor) hosted the two men on his Jalang’o TV to ‘set the record straight’ about their live-on-air tiff. The men buried the hatchet and corporates followed them like flies to a lamp. Instantly, Musyoka and Matendechere were flying high with new material possessions.
Matendechere later sued various corporations for using his image without his consent to market their products signalling a common trend where power fights back to reclaim its dominance over ordinary folk.
Ugali man
Real name Charles Odongo, the Ongata Rongai gym instructor became an overnight sensation when his self-made videos munching fist-size ugali went viral.
The video shot in what appears to be a small room with a white curtain in the background shows Odongo bare-chested and wearing a black pair of shorts enjoying his meal while beckoning on his cat.
In that instant, it is impossible to believe that the “art” of eating is enough to catapult someone to stardom. Let’s return to Certeau.
He argues that there is a mode of approaching culture that has been mastered by ordinary people like Odongo, whereby one tries to control the narrative of their own life. Something akin to being a master of your own destiny.
Odongo’s actions were therefore responding to an emerging digital culture that rewards a specific form of creativity that borders on the comical. That which has the power to go viral among everyday people glued to their screens – on laptops, tablets, and mobile phones.
Certeau has a fascinating term for these actions. He calls them the “tactics that wander out of orbit” as a result of “everyday struggles.”
Odongo’s case, just like that of Ntakufinya duo, was that Kenyans rallying on social media platforms to have him honoured.
Duncan Omanga, a Kenyan scholar who has researched extensively on ‘social media culture’, decries this slow recognition of what he calls “‘digital publics’ such as WhatsApp” (where videos of Ugali man spread like bush fire).
He cautions against the refusal to acknowledge the profound impact of these spaces, especially their power to help ordinary people mobilise in support of one of their “own” like Ugali man.
Odongo later became the beneficiary of massive endorsements by a wide range of companies that gifted him a brand new car and equipped his fledgling gymnasium with state-of-the-art equipment.
Mtumba man
Survival in modern society requires constant adaptation which sometimes means getting into a different character altogether.
Mtumba man epitomises this new approach to survival. In an economy where attracting customers is becoming stiffer every day as a result of a decline in disposable income, he devised a creative way of convincing potential clients to buy his wares.
His videos dressed as a woman convinces women to buy his clothes so that “waseme unapenda wababa (that you like monied men).” It’s a disguised marketing tactic that appeals to the common desires of some millennial women as has been seen on social media.
The rise of identity politics has led to persistent ‘online gender wars’ where men and women cannot fully agree on perceived gender roles and responsibilities in modern society.
Women who are lucky to date a “mubaba (a monied man or sponsor) are rated very highly by some of their peers, if social media conversations are anything to go by.
Mtumba man’s videos, which later went viral, for a keen observer, taps into these trends and milks them for both economic survival and comic effect. Fame and fortune – while not his main objective (he did confess in a television interview) – when they come his way – is just to cement his struggles.
Recently, however, he has heaped blame on well-wishers who accuses of not honouring their pledge to help him, an accusation that Jalang’o has rubbished. He says Mtumba man is facing his anti-climax moment because people are no longer interested in his funny videos. His 15 minutes of fame are over.
It is impossible to speculate how the trend where ordinary people doing everyday practices of survival and later become famous on social media will turn out. The only guarantee is that these people will continue to adapt through creative ways to counter the dominant cultural economy – consciously and unconsciously as we have seen.
Amol Awuor is a sub-editor and writer with the Star