Sometime in 2016, I was working in Kwale, and learned about this fantastic sounding festival simply called the “Sengenya Festival” so named for a regional music and dance. When I asked where and when it is, they couldn’t tell me. Or maybe they wouldn’t tell me, I don’t know. Most likely, they don’t know exactly when it is, but wait to hear an ancient call to arrive and celebrate. In any case, several ladies offered to pass me some recordings of the festival to take home with me and we made the exchange of music from one cell phone to another that happens all over rural Africa. I think I tried to listen to some of it at the time, but quickly forgot about it.

Sengenya is a dance and music of the Digo ethnic group who live along the Kenyan Coast. A yearly festival brings Sengenya groups together to play this hypnotic music from dusk ‘til dawn. Sengenya is a group activity, with drummers, dancers and the audience all coming together to offer praise to the ancestors and the greater spirit world. Sengenya features multiple drummers playing complex polyrhythms under angular and otherworldly dance styles. There is no other music like it in the world.

The Sengenya festival happens at no fixed date. If you want to go to this particular festival, you have to be in the know, or at least connected to the age-old family and clan networks that have kept the regions people together for centuries. This is no tourist event, but rather an entirely local, organic festival free from the soul crushing influence of commerce. I was invited once, but got the call the day of the festival and it would have been impossible for me to travel that distance. I can only assume that everyone else got the call at the same time. When you are called, you go.

The festival starts at 6 pm and goes on until 6 am, in the same manner as other regional African festivals. Since the festival and its music are spiritual in essence, it must be performed at night, the best time to bridge that gap between the worlds of the living and the dead. It is also when Christian missionaries and Islamic elders are asleep. I don’t know if substances are used to enhance the experience, but if other types of African festivals are any indication, it is likely. The area is principally Islamic so most are teetotalers, but that doesn’t stop people from drinking palm wine or chewing khat. There are most certainly animals that get slaughtered for the event and everyone has a good time. Most certainly, they locals very much look forward to the event.

One day, in 2023, I discovered the files on an old cell phone and started listening to them and was, of course, blown away by how raw and amazing the music was, and even more excited by the “field recordings” of screaming children, women singing and other local sounds that were mixed in between. There is about 10 hours of recorded sound. I tried to boil the audio down in to the best hour or so, and intermixed some of the unique and perplexing sounds of these local ladies’ daily lives.

These sounds are WILD. On the surface, this could be a cacaphonic and sweaty dance show at a DIY space in Fort Thunder era Providence, RI. Deeper though, these recordings are more. They are at once an amazing diversity of fantastic music, a document of the exuberance and joy of an ancient and life affirming fest and a picture of the lives of people… just living their lives in a world so far from mine. I can listen to this all day and find something new every time.

I have no idea who recorded the festival, or whether the recordings are actually multiple festivals. The ladies told me that they had gotten the audio from someone else. I have no way of knowing who these ladies were. I’m not sure I could find them even if I went back to Kwale, though I’m going to do my best.

All proceeds from this cassette will go to a local public health organization in the area that helps support maternal and child health in the region.

Pete Larson