Brenda... don't leave us yet!
2004-05-13 20:23
Nairobi - Midday inside the frenzy of the Modern Green Day & Night Bar in Nairobi's inner city, and Brenda Fassie's voice blasts from two giant silver speakers, cutting through the buzz of conversation, the haze of cigarette smoke and the sharp noise of breaking glass.
"We have been playing Brenda's music non-stop since the news broke here on Monday," (3rd May) says Charles Mwangi, a barman sweating from the effort of serving the bar's hardcore regulars.
Indeed, the news that Fassie, African diva and arguably the continent's most popular songstress of all time, was lying comatose and reportedly near to death in a Johannesburg hospital, has been greeted with amazement in Kenya. (She died on Sunday, 9th May.)
Here, Fassie and her music have always been loved, and Kenyans want Brenda to "live forever!" in the words of Sara Karanja, one of the Modern's colourful customers.
But since Fassie toured East Africa in 2001, and she took the effort to perform a few songs in Swahili, her popularity has boomed, and an unshakeable love for her has grown... at the same rate as the list of her well-publicised drug- and booze-fuelled misdemeanours has lengthened.
Said the writer of a letter to a Nairobi newspaper: "I've just returned from a month-long trip in Kenya and Brenda Fassie could be heard everywhere, from campsites to clubs. Her music is inspirational and cultured. She has suffered greatly from the trials of apartheid and survived in order to turn her suffering into inspiration."
"Brenda will always be the brave soul of this continent. Brenda, don't leave us yet? we will be poor without your rhythm?" pleaded a caller to one of Kenya's vibrant FM radio stations, the likes of which have been broadcasting Fassie hit after Fassie hit since the news of her illness was announced.
Yet it's not only the music that continues to keep Kenyans - young and old - enchanted by the woman they constantly refer to as 'Africa's Madonna'. Many thrill in recalling, in wonderful, exaggerated detail, each and every sordid, controversial episode in Fassie's full, flavoursome life.
"Remember that time Brenda punched that photographer, when she was high on cocaine?" says June Otieno, 26. Her friend, Priscilla, is quick to retort: "And then when Brenda first came out as a lesbian, and said she would f?k any sexy woman! Aaaaiii!"
In Nairobi it seems as if the Fassie legend, myth and enigma merge and expand, day by day.
Back inside the Modern - a bar that prides itself on being open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day and that hasn't closed it's door since 1968 (because it doesn't have a door) - someone has decided to play Fassie's 1986 hit, 'Weekend Special' ? It's a signal for the idle, drunken talk to stop, and the serious - but still drunken - dancing to begin.
Queen of the African night
"Queen of the African night!" shrieks a great-bosomed young woman dressed in shiny white lycra bodysuit, the reddest lips in the joint and the biggest buttocks, her fists furiously pumping the perspiration soaked air.
She leaves two middle-aged German men in a rather confused corner.
"Who iz dis Brendaaa whom efferyone iz talk about?" asks one, giving his name as 'Otmar from Bremen'. "Dis Fuzzy (Fassie) muzik, it seem to make da girls here krazy in da head!" laughs 'Otmar', taking yet another copious swig from his mug of cloudy Tusker Lager.
"I hope dis Brenda muzik make dem krazy in other places too; that will be real goot for uz" mutters Otmar's deadpan pal, Kris.
But in the Modern, the two horny Germans are the only souls ignorant of the Brenda Fassie phenomenon.
Durgs, sex and music
"Brenda is the best African artist ever. Because she is more than just songs! She is always in the news about drugs, sex and music. She is the number one rock and roll woman!" screams David Wanjiku, above the manic melody of a track from Fassie's 'Nomakanjani?' album.
"I love Brenda! She is the sex maniac!" exclaims Bonnie Mohammed. "She is the African woman, but not afraid to say she is the lesbian, that she loves women... like me!"
Everyone here speaks of Fassie in the present tense; not a single person uses the past tense. For there is life, not death, in the non-stop music.
"Me, I do not think Brenda will die," says Nicholas Tizo, mumbling and stumbling out into the flooded street. "And so, if her body it dies, so?" he philosophises. "Brenda is bigger than a body; she is a music angel of Africa! She will always be the livewire!"