I’m a Musician Who Happens to Be African

The Quiet Expectation

There’s a quiet expectation that lingers the moment I say I’m from Kenya.
Not spoken, but heard.
Not demanded, but assumed.
That I should sound a certain way.
Look a certain way.
Carry my culture like a costume, always on display.

That my music should echo tradition.
That it should wear identity like beadwork.
That it should walk barefoot through the past,
chant in ancestral tones,
and carry a drum under its arm wherever it goes.

The Weight of Expectations

I’ve asked myself what it means to be “authentically African.”
More than once.
Late at night.
Early in the morning.
In the stillness of my creative rituals;
when I’m not chasing aesthetic,
not chasing identity,
just chasing something true.

What Raised Me

The truth is, I don’t write songs in my native language.
Not out of shame,
but because I never knew it deeply enough to turn it into melody.

I wasn’t raised on folktales or oral histories.
I was raised on internet cafes, early 2000's discographies, and playlists that jumped from Kanye to ambient electronica.

I’ve heard more trap hi-hats than ngoma drum beats.
I’ve seen more TikToks than tribal dances.
I see a T-shirt more often than I do a kitenge.
Increasingly, the most African thing in my day is the dust on my shoes.

Dust from cracked sidewalks, imported vehicles and midday errands.
Not a drumbeat,
Not a proverb,
Not a ceremonial cloth.
Just the trace of a land I’m walking through, not performing for.

The Ancestors I Never Met

Sometimes I wonder what my ancestors would have wanted.
Would they be disappointed I don’t sing in their tongue?
Would they feel erased by my silence?

I don’t know.
I may never know.

But if there is any thread that runs from them to me,
it is not language, not sound, not ritual.
It is the act of creating from where I am.
Of making something from the fragments I inherit,
and choosing to make it my own.

Not a Representation. A Reflection.

I don’t make music to prove where I’m from.
I make music to process who I am.
Because in a world that tries to narrate you before you’ve said a word,
art becomes the only honest interruption.

And who I am is not easily packaged.
I am as much Leon as I am Nduati.
As much Stephen as I am Kimemia.
Split between names that carry lineage
and names that carry modernity.
Between what was given to me
and what I chose.
And I let that contradiction breathe in every note.

I Don’t Fit the Script

Yes, I’m Kenyan. Yes, I’m African.
But that is the context, not the product.

I am not here to decorate my sound with borrowed symbols for export.
I am not here to fit into the global template of what an “African artist” should sound like.
I am not here to satisfy a hunger for the exotic.

I am not trying to bring “Africa to the world.”
I am trying to bring myself to the mic,
and leave something honest behind.

This Moment Is Enough

I want to build a catalogue that sounds like this moment.
Not the past.
Not the expectation.
Just the real, unglamorous, uncurated present.
Modern. Dislocated. Self-aware.
Rooted not in tradition, but in choice.

My music is not a performance of identity.
It is the result of standing still long enough
to hear my own voice
beneath the noise of what others expect it to be.

Just Klense

I am not here to carry the weight of a continent.
I am not here to apologize for the parts of me that don’t translate.
I am not here to explain why my art sounds the way it does.

I am Klense.
A musician who happens to be African.
I don’t represent the culture.
I reflect my experience.
And sometimes, that’s the most authentic thing you can do.

But as much as I am simply me,
I like to think my ancestors still live on
in the way I trip over my L’s and R’s on vocal takes
that sit quietly on my hard drive.
They show up in the background hiss,
in the second-guessing,
in the parts I leave in because they feel real.
Not in grand tributes,
but in the mess I make trying to get it right.

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