,​This past week, I was a panelist in a session that reminded me of a famous discussion that took place at the African Studies Association conference in 1995. I first heard of that conference from Mshai Mwangola, when she was introducing Prof Micere Mugo who was giving a keynote address at the University of Nairobi a few years ago. 

The discussion took place in November 1995, in a panel convened at the African Studies Association conference to respond to an article by Phillip Curtin, the eminent African history scholar, published in March in the academic magazine Chronicle of Higher Education.  In the piece entitled "Ghettoizing African History," Curtin offered anecdotes of hiring practices that, in his view, were reducing African history scholarship to a “ghetto,” because American universities were reserving African history positions for faculty on the basis of their black skin, rather than on their competence.

​Over the last few weeks, I have come to understand at least three narratives which some Kenyans use to wish away the contradictions of the Kenyan state. No matter how much such Kenyans are presented with evidence of changing times or with history that gives a different perspective, they will repeat these narratives louder to drown out the other voices. 

​Behind all these narratives lies an effort to wish away the fragmentation of the people by the Kenyan state. But, more than that, these narratives are protected by the curriculum of the public schools which does not allow the teaching of arts, and particularly the teaching of history. Kenyans are thus denied the opportunity to develop their intellectual capacity to understand not just the limitations the Kenya state, but to understand the reality of the world in the 21st century. 

The narratives are:

I love music for many reasons, and this is one of them: Music reveals the truth about us.

​Music is human creativity in its purest form. It has no language or ethnicity. Music speaks to our souls even when we don’t understand the words. It reaches far beyond itself. It unites us when we’re divided. It calms us when we troubled. For many of us who study the world and are awed by the good in it, but still have to confront the human capacity for evil, music is the place where we accept those contradictions.  Music also trains our minds to be disciplined, warms our bodies by inspiring us to dance, and trains us to be skilled. It is no mistake that Thomas Südhof, 2013 winner of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, said that he owed his career in science to his basoon teacher.

​And music can also put food on the table.

The other day, I was doing my usual scrolling through twitter when I saw tweets about the launch of the Kenyan National Music Policy. The launch caught me by surprise because I did not hear about the event through my usual networks in music education. But later, I understood why. The so-called committee of experts set up by the Minister of Culture (a minister whose impact I am yet to see two years into his tenure) includes only popular and gospel singers, producers and government officers. There’s not a single music educator or scholar. 

It appears that music educators and traditional music performers were conspicuously absent from the whole process of establishing the Music policy because the policy was all about the money. And politics. Which is the usual Kenyan story. 

My goodness, the last week for me has been a whirlwind.

Those who follow me on social media know that the story of my husband and I and our recent wedding has now gotten onto national media. The response has been overwhelming. we’ve gotten calls, emails and inbox messages from men and women, some saying that our story has moved them to tears, others saying that our story has encouraged them and given them hope. Not hope to get married in particular, but just hope that miracles happen, that love prevails, and that we can do things differently.

But there’s been another story that has just been as moving for me, and which I don’t know if I’ll tell as compellingly – that of music.

Muoki Mbuga has posted an excellent piece about the irony that while the political elite are funding their children's education in the arts, on political platforms they discourage wananchi from taking "unmarketable" subjects like history, languages and performing arts.

It made me remember being struck by the fact that I would go to work, where I'd be told that the arts have "no market," then when I leave work I'd see adverts and bill boards for private schools which did not show kids in labs but kids doing performance and having fun. At GEMS Cambridge school on Magadi road, there's a huge wall with pictures of students in acting costume and make-up. So why would there be no market for the arts, if parents who can afford good schools are choosing where to take their kids by the presence of the arts and sports? 

In this age when the buzzwords for dealing with youth unemployment are “developing talent,” the Parable of the talents in Matthew 25 provides interesting lessons about what talent actually is, and what it should do.

Three of those lessons are that

1. just like in the parable where the talents were given by the master, talent comes from God

2. to make the talent bear fruit and multiply, one needs to work. What distinguished the first two workers from the one who buried his talent was not what they received, but the work they put in

3. talent is for the benefit of people other than one’s self – in this case it was for the master, and  in a socially conscious society, talent is for the service of others. Remember King David, for example, whose musical skills were for soothing King Saul, or Dorcas who had made garments for people in the community. If we serve the people, we serve God as well. Remember what Jesus said – those who will enter the kingdom are those who feed the hungry, heal the sick and visit those in prison.
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So from the parable, one can say that there’s no such thing as “talent development.” And everyone has a talent. Some have several different talents, while others may have fewer which they use to make a great impact. So what matters is that one is in a context where the talent becomes evident, and usually that context involves a collective project at church, in a class or elsewhere. Usually, we get to find out our talents from how people respond to the work we do.