![]() The next year, they became the restaurant’s house band. They auditioned at the most prominent club in Nairobi at the time, Carnivore Restaurant, in December 1986. In 1987, the song became the first Kenyan record to go platinum, selling a total of 200,000 copies.The success of Jambo Bwana, despite the legal hurdles, didn’t dampen the five-brother ensemble.īy 1986, they had outgrown Mombasa and its beach hotels the same way they had outgrown Kaloleni and its mabomani clubs more than a decade earlier. Them Mushrooms only got the rights back to the song five years after losing them in 1985. In that time, it crossed borders and was redone even by fledging Euro-Carribean group Boney M. In the next year “Jambo Bwana” sold 50, 000 copies, going up to 100, 000 copies three years later. It was typical predatory behavior from a studio house, choosing the end of a grueling recording session to make musicians sign critical legal documents. Its simple structure and transcultural appeal was now packaged as a proper record, ready to spread its wings beyond beach hotels.īut by the end of that day, Teddy made an expensive mistake.Īmong the papers he signed off on that day as band leader was one that signed off the rights to the song. So one day in 1980, the band gathered at Polygram’s busy studios in Nairobi’s Industrial Area and bellowed one of the most iconic songs from Kenya in the 1980s. He was a director at a top studio in Nairobi called Polygram Records. One night, an audience member approached the band after the show and offered them the deal of a lifetime. In Mombasa’s beach circuit, Them Mushrooms thrived. Unlike the high energy chaos of mabomani clubs, beach hotels offered more money for fewer hours, and a lot less commotion. ![]() In 1974, Them Mushrooms moved to the beach hotel circuit. They had already outgrown this underground phase of their existence. ![]() Only Teddy suffered an injury, but that incident cemented something they’d all known for a while. That night, the band was attacked by rivals during a sold-out show. Them Mushrooms’ journey from Kaloleni to global success begins with a disastrous show on a dark night in 1973. It was complete in many ways by 1972 but it would be another eight years before they hit success beyond Mombasa. The ensemble also consisted of non-family members Arthur Okoth and Pritt Nyale. The last in the string of brothers from the Harrison household, Dennis Kalume, followed on the drums. Another brother, George, came in on the rhythm guitar and then John joined, on the keyboard. Their brother, Billy, replaced Ruth on the bass guitar. JAMBO BWANA ORIGINAL HOW TO“All 7 of us, the siblings were musical,” he adds, “Ruth taught me how to play the piano, which is why I am the keyboardist in the family.” His sister Ruth played the bass guitar, a short lived first in many ways because “Music was taboo for women in those days, at least instruments, so Ruth went back to vocals” as John puts it. Teddy begun playing professionally, in Kaloleni’s ‘mabomani’ party scene, in 1969. It was a common conversation between bartenders and curious tourists eager to learn Kiswahili.īy the time Teddy wrote the song, Them Mushrooms had existed for a decade in one form or the other. What’s amazing about the song is that it was written, almost verbatim, around the conversation Teddy heard in 1979. ![]() ![]() Although the band has 15 albums to date and hundreds of songs, their most iconic tune remains “Jambo Bwana”, a song so simple in its composition and yet so catchy that it broke records and was redone in seven different versions. They demanded it night after night, and soon it was clear Them Mushrooms had hit pay dirt. In fact, the song was an instant hit with tourist audiences. It sounded like a nursery rhyme, and no one but the band singing it thought it would appeal to anyone older than five. Test audiences, mostly other bands, John tells me, hated it. John is a dapper man with long, flowing dreadlocks emerging from under his trademark flat cap.Īs all conversations about Them Mushrooms go, ours quickly turns back to the song Teddy Harrison begun composing that night at the pool bar 37 years ago. On a cold Tuesday morning a month ago, Teddy’s younger brother and bandmate John Katana and I are seated across each other at a coffee shop on Kenyatta Avenue. ![]()
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