The Kenyan group that wants to rewrite the history of punk – Ismail Einashe

Crystal Axis, an Afropunk band made up of five musicians, has established themselves as one of the most important groups in the up-and-coming Kenyan rock scene. I went to visit them while they were rehearsing in a recording studio at the International trade fair grounds, on the outskirts of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. One of the guitarists plays distorted riffs with a scratched and heavy sound, while the drummer hits hard on the drums.

The group is formed by singer Ahmed Bulhan, known as AB; Djae Aroni and Fox Elijah on guitar; Doug Kihoro on bass and Dan Gichia on drums and percussion. They began in the late 2000s, against the backdrop of the alternative music scene that had developed in Nairobi at the time, with a number of bands playing everything from indie rock to punk to heavy metal.

Aroni was still in school at the time and sneaked out of the house one night to see Jack The Hammer, a local post-hardcore band. The lead singer and guitarist was Elijah. Seeing him go wild on stage, with his skinny black jeans, the standard Vans and the cheeky punk attitude deeply affected Aroni, who told his friends at school that he wanted to start a rock band of his own. In 2009, Crystal Axis was born, which AB immediately joined. Elijah and Kihoro arrived in 2017, Gichia last year.

Being teenage rock musicians, who went to play in the evenings even though they were still in high school, created problems, says Aroni. In the clubs they had to avoid the bouncers so as not to have their identity cards checked: “We literally had to make our way to the sound of bribes to be able to perform”.

Unlike most young Kenyans, mostly Afrobeats and hip hop fans, they were inspired by the pure energy of punk. Aroni recalls a video of the US group Green Day, from the live album Bullet in a Bible. Singer Billie Joe Armstrong held his genitals tight as he spun around the stage like crazy. “Here’s what I want to do”, Aroni said to himself. Her partner Kihoro, on the other hand, was inspired by Scandinavian death metal, while Gichia honed her musical talent by playing in a local Christian rock band.

In 2017 the group released their first major album, Leopold, a commentary on the colonial atrocities committed by King Leopold II of Belgium in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since then the band has released three albums, winning fans in Kenya and abroad, especially among those attracted to their distinctive, bold and infectious punk rock sound.

The texts, in English with a few words in Swahili, are very political and address issues ranging from colonial history to corruption to racism. “We want to tell African stories from an African point of view,” says Aroni.

A hit single from them, Nyayo house, talks about the legacy of Daniel arap Moi, the longest-running president of Kenya, and who led what has gone down in history as the “Nyayo regime”. The lyrics of the song, full of anger, shed light on a troubled chapter in Kenyan history and denounce a time when there was no freedom of expression in the country. The title takes the name of a skyscraper of government offices in the center of Nairobi, notorious for the cells where Moi’s opponents, in power from 1978 to 2002, were imprisoned and tortured.

“We are dissidents … Nyayo sucks,” reads the refrain, which according to AB speaks of a “generational trauma” and part of Kenyans’ need to express themselves on this chapter of their history.

In August, Crystal Axis released their latest album, Black AF, a celebration of contemporary African identities. It is inspired by their experiences as young black Africans facing challenges such as corruption, but it is also a celebration of their strength, talent and creativity. The group also wants to use the power of punk to create a space where young Kenyans can play this genre on their own terms.

Another ambition is to reclaim the history of punk, which in their opinion has been “bleached” and has often forgotten the contribution of black artists. Aroni gives the example of Death, a proto-punk group founded in Detroit in 1971, to which we tend not to attribute any merit in the development of the genre. In the late seventies, in the golden age of punk, other black bands played an important role in the explosive growth of its success, with bands such as Pure Hell, born in Philadelphia in 1974, and X-Ray Spex, formed in London in 1976 on the initiative of the Somali-British singer Poly Styrene.

As part of their efforts to challenge the image of punk rock music as a genre dominated by white males, Crystal Axis were scheduled to play at Decolonise fest in the UK in September. The festival celebrates black punk music, but the band has not been granted visas to enter the UK. The outrage and disappointment were enormous, not least because the tickets for their shows in Leeds, Manchester and London were already sold out. However, this does not diminish their ambition: in their eyes, punk is a powerful tool for channeling anger, intellectual curiosity, joy and hopes.

In the last elections in Kenya most of the band’s musicians did not vote. For Kihoro, Kenyan politics is “old stuff”. Aroni agrees and adds that most of the young Kenyans feel unable to change the political landscape: “Our vote does not count. We can not do anything with it”.

However, the lyrics of the Crystal Axis contain a warning: young people should not be ignored. The song Take the throne, which speaks of the “excess of surveillance” and the violence of the state, explodes with these words: “Send your soldiers, send your criminals. We are fifty million and we are ten times stronger. Let’s tear it all down! We will rebuild everything from scratch. Every roaring fire starts with a single match ”.

(Translation by Giusy Muzzopappa)