Because the mix is hot, it lights my fire

Play is something we do in childhood, whoever, whatever we are, without thinking about it.

Kachumbari 7, a mixed group of musicians in every sense of that word, remind us of what it is to be little again with the world at our fingertips.

Although all of them are experienced professionals, they go right back to basics.

A child thumps a stick against the wall, makes a sound with its voice, experiments all the time with what noise and rhythm are and how they eventually get transformed into music.

Thus the group’s first CD will appeal not only to adults but to children and to those of us who never wanted to grow up anyway.

The group performed to a full house at Nairobi’s Alliance Francaise on March 7, many enticed there by the poster for the concert and CD which is nothing short of brilliant.

For those of us of a certain age, the reference to the famous Beatles cover where the four Liverpudlians cross Abbey Road in London on their way to the recording studios was clear; to the rest, the picture of seven strangely costumed individuals crossing a deserted Moi Avenue in a single line with their instruments in front of an unusually patient matatu was intriguing, to say the least.

Incidentally, the Father Christmassy-looking character crossing the road in unseasonably warm and rather exotic clothes is in fact Dominic Ogari pretending to be that boy genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The “Adopt-a-Light” advertisement sign behind shows the absent drummer Obuya Owino who does not normally surface at 7am on any Sunday, not even to go to church, being, like so many animals, a creature of the night. So the seven are in fact eight.

The whole mixture is irresistible, captured with limpidity on the CD; the list of instruments played is too long to mention but each musician has a formidable repertoire not least Karimi Mugambi whose daytime job is as a music lawyer.

(One day musicians may make a living just doing what they were destined to do…)

Kirit Pattni plays bamboo flutes, claves, and Indian finger cymbals while Prasad Velankar is a master of the Tabla, the gourd drum and the padhant.

Sally Clark plays double bass and cello and the dreadlocked Mr Owino is a virtuoso of the Djembe and congas and is utterly riveting to watch.

One beauty of a live concert is to see the way musicians dance with their instruments.

Sally Clark leans her head wistfully against the electric bass as if straining to hear what it is telling her, while Velankar’s hands, like Owino’s, choreograph a furious dance in themselves, each part playing a role — fingers, heels, flat of the hand and side.

Director Jim Pywell is quite simply a latter-day Mozart – a musical phenomenon who could lure music out of a concrete wall. He weaves the evening together, demonstrating the versatility of the group and its collective imagination:

“The word kachumbari comes from the name of the relish made from tomatoes, onions, coriander and chillies. The number seven has many associations: The seven colours of the rainbow, the seven musical notes of the Indian Raga and the European scale, the seven continents of the world, the seven ages of man…

“The members of Kuchmabari Seven originate from seven places: Nairobi, Kisumu, Mumbai, London, Malindi, Hull and Kisii. Kachumbari Seven formed in 2006 for the Nairobi Samosa Festival,” the insert in the CD tells us.

Thus the music derives from every imaginable source: Tongue twisters are given a new life in “Cha@t” in which a garden bird tries to learn the many language of Nairobi but ends up twisting his tongue into so many knots.

Jim Pywell’s delectable “Hippo” sets a poem by a British poet to music — a jingle in which the proud owner of the animal discovers to his horror that it is in fact a Hippopotamissis, putting a wholly different cast on things.

“Melody in Raga Yaman” conjures up a balmy night in India or a certain place on the Indian Ocean with its haunting, lilting tune.

In each number, the melody is lifted by the accompaniment, the response echoing and mimicking, the effect always being very light and humorous.

They enjoy turning everything on its head: in “Githurai to Galway,” an Irish backpacker meets a beautiful girl on River Road (where else?) and tells her about his well-thatched house and cows back home. That sense of play and fun is ever-present.

And yet these are skilled musicians with a serious intent: to show that the multiplicity of ethnicities that make up this country can come together and play, sharing their diverse sounds and rhythms to create something quite fresh and original.

What they teach you is simply to listen to everything around you: Pywell does an admirable imitation of the robin chat’s song which inspired “Cha@t.”

Imagine if we all actually listened to each other and to the music that surrounds us every minute of the day (not all of it desirable.)

Nothing they do is predictable. Next time I expect they might even come up with the Eighth Matatu Symphony of the Eternal Nairobi Traffic Jam (with apologies to Gustav Mahler.) After all, Gerard Hoffnung composed a musical work for vacuum cleaners, didn’t he?

At the moment, the CD Mozart on Moi Avenue by Kachumbari 7 is only available directly via e-mail from kachumbariseven@gmail.com, but should soon be available in major outlets

betty.caplan1@gmail.com