As news of Michael Jackson's death continue to dominate headlines and reactions all over the world, East Africans have reason to claim a special relationship with the one billed as the biggest pop star ever.

He may not have performed in the region, but his music and videos carry memorable clips of the region.

For instance, part of the footage on his nature-themed track Earth Song from the album Bad released in 1987 was shot at the Tarangire National Park in Tanzania.

A manyatta near the park was the location for a choreographed routine.

Moreover, the Kiswahili verse “Nakupenda pia, Nakupenda pia mpenziwe” that appears in Liberian Girl featured on the same album is similar to the one Kenyan artiste Ayub Ogada contributed for Lionel Richie’s song Original Woman recorded earlier.

The song, a call to save nature, has images of a destroyed rain forest and slaughtered wildlife.

It has a close-up of dummies of a dead elephant and her calf that were made in Kenya but moved to Tanzania for the scene.

The clip shows Jackson intervening to save nature. The scene of the elephant and her calf coming back to life is probably the most captivating in the video.

Originally, Earth Song was to be filmed at the Amboseli National Park, but since it involved darting elephants, “The Kenya Wildlife Services would not allow it,” said Jenny Pont of Pontac pictures who did the local co-ordination for filming and location.

However Tanzania was more flexible and had the filming done on its soil.

The crew used a helicopter to simulate the storms. A local cast of Maasais clinging on to trees to indicate the destructive climatic change added to the greatness of the video.

The footage was mixed with additional films shot elsewhere to create a captivating video clip that highlights the dangers of environmental degradation and the need to conserve wildlife.

The song Black and White has a clip of lions and a troupe of Maasai doing the dance in the opening sequence (all in Tanzania) that is deftly blended into a concert hall scene shot in the US.

Later in 1992, MJ visited Tanzania as part of a tour that had started out in Gabon but had to cut his trip short due to negative publicity.

Writing for the May 1992 issue of Ebony, Robert E. Johnson seemed to absolve MJ from the negative claims that he constantly held his nose in Tanzania because of the country’s foul smell. He explained that MJ did that as a nervous gesture. “That is how producer Quincy Jones came to nickname him smelly,” said the author.

The general impression from the press was that he despised Africa but according to the article, MJ did appreciate the continent.

There were claims that he refused to shake hands with villagers in Gabon, but Ebony refutes this saying he actually shook hands with hundreds of people.

On allegations that Africans did not consider Jackson a good role model, the US magazine countered that the reverse was instead the truth.

“After Michael read a prayer in the Basilica of Our Lady Of Peace in the Ivory Coast, a 9-year old boy exclaimed ‘Michael is love, love! I want to be like him.’”

This was MJ’s second trip to Africa, the first was in 1974 when he came as part of the family group Jackson Five. It was organised by the late Johnny Sekka, a Senegalese actor.

But his elder brother Jermaine Jackson has been to Kenya twice.

The first time was at the 1987 All African Games music concert in Kasarani.

He returned in the 1990s to attend the opening of a home for Aids orphans in Dagoretti.

But Jermaine, though loved by many was not Michael who already had a big career as a solo outside of the family set.

His many fans in Kenya would have paid an arm and a leg to watch him perform live on stage.

There are however doubts that Kenya could have supported such a concert by the world’s biggest pop star.

In fact, despite having visited Africa, his only performance was in South Africa in 1997 which was not considered an entirely commercial venture but a low-priced tour as his way of showing appreciation for former South Africa President Nelson Mandela.

And just to get a glimpse of the challenges of hosting an MJ concert, Attie Van Wyk, the CEO of Big Concerts, the South African company which organised the event, illustrated the logistical challenges involved: Jackson had an entourage of 140. Big Concerts had to hire over 100 of its own for local running. Stage equipment required 32 trucks to transport them between the venues.

“We had to be extremely hands-on to ensure that all went on smoothly,” he said.

But it paid off handsomely selling 234,000 tickets at between R150-350 with a gross collection of $6.5 million. The CEO said that it covered his costs and made a good profit.

It is unlikely that any of the East African countries would have the capacity for such a tour.

At 60,000 tickets, Uganda has had the highest concert attendance in the region so far which though much higher than its two sister states, is way below the turnout in South Africa.

For MJ, he may have skipped Kenya, but has remained an idol to thousands who bought his music and danced to his music.

His Thriller album was a runaway success but more profoundly illustrated the the shocking proliferation of music piracy in the country.

Determined to maximise on returns, his label CBS records, which had offices in Nairobi, mooted a strategy that would ensure that the record would have a simultaneously worldwide release that would hopefully lock pirates long enough for the company to recoup and makes profits.

Ordinarily records are first released abroad before moving on to the rest of the world but this ambitious same-day release was going to be different.

With the strategy, shops took their deliveries on Saturday after their business hours but were all to open with the album that Monday.

The thinking was that it would allow the label at least a week or two of legitimate sales before pirated copies arrived.

But they had seriously underrated the cunning and efficiency of the international pirate machinery which flooded the market with millions of cassettes the same week the album was released.

Unlike in other cases when pirates issued their copies with copycat album sleeve, they prepared inlays with jackets well ahead of the release and all that they had to do was make copies of the record and pack it for sale.

The pirates did not know the design of the record and so improvised and to very good effect coming up with a design that had MJ in a spectacular dance move.

When released, the original had a picture of the artiste in a relaxed posture with a pet leopard cub but the pirated copy was much more compelling for a dance album.

With news of his death, copies of pirated CDs and VCDs are back on the streets.

The affection to MJ is aptly explained by a die-hard fan who quipped: “He may have been all those negative things I have read but for a musician there may never quite be another one like him.”

In Kenya, he had been slated to stay at the Mt Kenya Safari Club which was once owned by the Hollywood movie star the late William Holden and Stephanie Powers and later associated with Saudi Oil magnate Adnan Khassogghi.

It has hosted dozens of US celebrities and the British royal family.

The initial announcement had been that the entire Jackson’s group (without MJ) would be on the show but the event organised by American promoter Dick Berg was hit by a wave of negative press turning the whole organisation into a major fiasco.

Though circumstances that led to the aborted show remain unclear, the talk of the family group on the shows line up, fizzled but Jermaine turned up on his own.

Asked what had happened he said that he was here to safe the good name of his family. ‘’ I want all to know that the organisation may not be right but we are people of honour” he said.