Ethnicity and the brokerage of Kenyan popular music: categorizing ‘Riziki’ by Ja-Mnazi Afrika T. Michael Mboya a,b * a Department of Literature, Theatre and Film Studies, Moi University, PO Box 3900, Eldoret 30100, Kenya; b Department of African Literature, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa This article extends the description of the popular music industries as sites in which ethnic identities were constructed and consolidated in early twenty-first century Kenya. The interest is in the brokerage of the music. The focus is on the categorization of the song ‘Riziki’ by the Kenyan popular music band Ja-Mnazi Afrika. ‘Riziki’ was first recorded in 2005 and continued to be a ‘hit’ through 2008. Over year 2008, a number of institutions that were engaged in popular music brokerage variously classified ‘Riziki’ as a western benga song, a Luo song, a Zilizopendwa (Golden Oldies) song, a rumba song, etc. On his part, the song’s composer, Awillo Mike, described ‘Riziki’ as a rumba with a muffled zouk beat. The paper argues that the differing categorizations of ‘Riziki’ by brokers arose as a result of the factoring in of ethnicity as an element in the identification of the group in which to place the song, and that such ethnicity-sensitive classifications in turn served to (re)produce and/or normalize ethnic perceptions – and, by extension, helped to construct and consolidate ethnic identities – in early twenty-first century Kenya. Keywords: ‘Riziki’; Ja-Mnazi Afrika; popular music brokerage; categorization of popular music; ethnic identities; post-colonial Kenya Introduction This article extends the description of the popular music industries as sites in which ethnic iden- tities were constructed and consolidated in early twenty-first century Kenya. 1 Several studies of Kenyan popular music of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries demonstrate that the music actively (re)produced ethnic perceptions that fed into the ‘tribalized’ politics of the country (Mboya 2009; Ogude 2007; Simatei 2010; Wa Mutonya 2007, 2008). These studies focus on the music – especially the lyrics – and examine how through this the musicians participated in the ethnic politics of their country. The interest of the present paper is in the brokerage of the music. By ‘brokerage’ I mean the availing of information about the music by individuals and institutions that are not directly involved in the production of the music. As used here, brokerage is not limited to marketing. Some of the individuals and institutions that are involved in aspects of brokerage are completely independent of the music makers and producers. They only involve them as the proprietors of materials that the brokers use to come up with their own products. Such brokerage connects the music with the consumers. And, as a matter of course, the broker profits from his furnishing of the consumer with information regarding the music. The profit may or may not be monetary. The proposition that the paper puts forward is that the brokering of Kenyan popular music in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries was significantly © 2015 Journal of African Cultural Studies *Email: tommichaelmboya@gmail.com Journal of African Cultural Studies, 2015 Vol. 27, No. 2, 205–215, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2015.1010637