KevinBahati
Spotted by a local producer, the boy is put into a recording studio and comes out with a quite remarkable debut recording called ‘Siku Ya Kwanza’. And then, after only seven months in the music industry, the boy is pronounced the hottest new male talent on Kenya’s gospel music scene at the 2011 Groove Awards. And in 2013, aged just 19, he wins the Best Male Artist category. It’s a heart-warming story, but also a tearjerker. Orphaned as a child, Kevin treasures the meagre memories he has of his mother, the inspiration behind his latest hit, ‘Mama’. Kevin didn’t have long with his mother, who died when he was only six, but one thing he does remember is that she told him: “If you work hard, you can get wherever you want to go.”
Street life
Grooving it
Well, he certainly did that. Faced with a life on the streets – which he describes as “snatching handbags, sniffing glue and smoking bhang” – seven-year-old Kevin presented himself at the local children’s home, the ABC School in
Dressed to thrill
Orphaned as a child, Kevin treasures the meagre memories he has of his mother the Mathare slums of Nairobi, and there he asked to be taken in. “It was hard,” he says. “No one to call you son, no one to care how you are doing, but it was better than being on the streets.” Better, indeed, because it was at the orphanage that Kevin turned to religion, which proved to be his inspiration. “You’ve got to enter the mind of Christ and embrace love and forgiveness,” he says Kevin’s trials were not over, however. After a few years at the orphanage they told him that, regretfully, they needed his bed for a younger boy. But they did Africa’s low cost airline
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