Kenyan’s are best known for wood carvings. Some small charms have religious purposes, protection from evil spirits or to attack helpful ones. Larger carvings of head, human figures or animals often represent gods or spirits. You can find examples of all over the world in galleries or museums.
Kenya Music Festival
The Kenya Music Festival is an event that is held every year between the months of May and October. It is administered by the government under the category Ministry of Education. Everyone who lives in Kenya may participate in one way or another. One form of participation is for students of all ages, grade school through college students, as well as school personnel. The other form of participation is for the general public, work or private sector, such as banks, offices, religious institutions and etc. The festival program includes: African, Western, and Oriental Vocal, Instrumental Music, and Dance, as well as Elocution in African and Western Languages.
The festival have four main objectives:
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To study the art of Music in all forms including Elocution and Dance.
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To guide students and those teaching with helpful criticism by qualified persons
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To produce promising performers before the audience.
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To promote the preservation of Kenya cultural heritage.
Throughout the festival their are different areas of competition with a semi - professional requirement.
Open Choral Class
This class was with out age limit, creating competition between students and teachers. Once the students beat the teachers causing social embarrassment for the teachers. This incident led to two sections be created, one for teachers and one for the students.
The Set Piece
This inspired some musicians to compose pieces in the style of these set pieces. This group has been called patriotic songs. They are encouraged through the sponsorship of groups which commissioned the festival organizers to choose a winning choir based on a given theme. The winning song is adopted by the organization and the choir is sometimes paid.
The government promote these songs especially those written in Swahili. Dealing with city themes and current affairs. These songs can be classified as urban folk songs when accompanied by electronic instruments, because they were simple and easy to learn.
The Folk Song
This style seeks to portray dramatization of life in the village where all the expressions of their music are integrated; the song, the dance, and the instrument. Folk songs also serve as a foundation for traditional songs that are now used by the new African musician and composer as composition models.
Most of the folk songs retain their original language making them traceable to their original function. Sometimes the text of songs are changed, making them appropriate to be used in political situations or religious meetings.
European Section
This section has added all kinds of European vocal and instrumental solo and ensemble sections, including orchestra and Western dances. In the beginning the main competitors in this section were professional singers. Once students begin to participate in large numbers the festival was forced to begin an age group limit.
British ran schools used to have a monopoly in this competition. As the government became more involved in the festival, students from these British schools began to teach in other centers. The festival provided educational opportunities for students to learn what was inspected of participants.
The piano has been the most popular Western instruments at the festival. There was a wide range of ages that participated, age six to fourteen, making it necessary to adopt age limit groups.
The festival had to assign set pieces for these classes, because the level of the groups was various.
The African Section
African vocal and instrumental solo and ensemble sections are counterparts with the European section. This section is hard to monitor because of the creativity of the teachers who found ways to integrate or synthesize instruments that did not belong to the same culture.
Musicians are encouraged to attempt to play African instruments as solo instruments. In this class participants always accompany themselves with songs and or other instruments. The official have a hard time in this section, because solo are accompanied by dance as well, which is from a different class.
This section is reinforced through competitions away from the Music Festival. A dance section was incorporated by the School’s Drama Festival. The Festival planners decided to add African dance because it is a type of dramatic action.
The Festival serve as an artistic, creative, lyric and dramatic institution, that has revived folk and culture values as well as provide a sense of History.