MUTHONI DRUMMER QUEEN The latest album from Kenya’s boss lady imagines many female voices

SHE becomes we on the latest album from Kenya’s boss lady

Muthoni Drummer Queen

Muthoni Drummer Queen has always embodied many personas — singer, rapper, dancer, promoter, CEO and #hairgoals goddess. But with her latest album SHE, the musician embraces many more. The project imagines 12 strong women, each with her own outlook on life, womanhood and contemporary Kenya. Recorded in the Swiss Alps with production duo GR! & Hook and Santo, the tracks took shape organically, and with a focus afforded by being away from home. “When we started to write, we knew we wanted it to represent Kenya, but what is Kenya?” Muthoni recalls. “By the fifth or sixth song, it felt like each one was about a different woman. I want audiences who listen to SHE to know that there is a lot of compassion for their experiences. Choose you. Be the person you want to be.”

Opening track ‘Million Voice’ channels a Kenyan Somali woman who suffers prejudice as a refugee, while ‘Kenyan Message’ praises a female protestor reminiscent of environmentalist Wangari Maathai. “Politics is very patriarchal here but when it hits the fan, it’s the women who come through and force reform,” says MDQ. On ‘Lover’, we meet a transgender woman having the best sex of her life. Meanwhile ‘Suzie Noma’ encourages female entrepreneurship. “It’s about women working together," she says. "This generation has access to more things than ever before, so if you can invest in your dreams with your girlfriends, do it.”

SHE also displays almost as many musical flavours as women characters, with dancehall, hip hop, rock and electro all flowing into this powerful long player. It’s a big sound and testament to MDQ’s own growth. Born Muthoni Ndonga, she started drumming and singing at school and dropped out of economics at university to pursue her real passion, releasing her first EP in 2008. She now hosts the Blankets & Wine and African Nouveau festivals across East Africa, and has become the unofficial first lady of Kenya’s alternative new music wave.

But she’s not satisfied yet. For her, the local music scene has far to go. “There’s been a renaissance in interest from Kenyans in their own music, and the young ones are on the way to mainstreaming their sounds,” she says. “But Kenya is fractious and the socioeconomic divide is real. Artists like myself are seen as bougie kids making music for white people, and that’s not true. I was born in the ghetto and then my family moved to a rural suburb. But I also grew up loving Lauryn Hill and knowing that women rappers can be banging, meaningful and dope.”

MDQ therefore wants to use her own strength and influence to effect change. “I’ve been thinking a lot about how to create opportunities for crews from each side of the tracks to develop a deeper compassion for each other’s perspectives by making music together,” she says. “I don’t care if it’s acoustic or rap or wavy as long as it’s sustainable. I want to contribute to the bridge for this next generation. If only a few of us achieve some measure of success that isn’t available to everyone else, it’s a vanity. I want the idea of Kenyan music to be in a global space.”