Kenny Gilmore

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Artist: Kenny Gilmore
Genre: Roots, Fusion, Blues
Country: Malawi

Artist Bio: Kenny, nicknamed Amunamuna (the double man) due to his stage energy, was born in Kenya's Rift Valley in 1978. He grew up in Malawi and started a music career after traveling to New Orleans to learn jazz/blues harmonica in the late 1990s. In 2002, he won the Louisiana Rebel State Harmonica championship.

He then returned to Malawi in 2003 and began looking to start a band. Over a period of three months, he sought out veteran players from the Blantyre music scene and began to session in the spare bedroom of his flat in Blantyre. At first they had difficulty playing together, with Kenny knowing only American styles and the rest of the band mostly Central African beats.

The group began formally playing together under the name, The Sangalala Blues Band, in 2004. They continued recording, at first in a back garden studio in Blantyre, complete with a guard outside whose job was to hurl rocks at the crows to prevent them from influencing the recordings. Some of first songs on their first recording feature birdsong in the background—a beautiful accompaniment to the end of a recording session in Blantyre.

Eventually, the Sangalala Band played for the First Lady at the Royal Palace alongside legendary Malian guitarist Habib Koite. Inspired by his example, the band became more ambitious, launching their first public album, Ngati Mafunde (2006) at the French Cultural Centre in Blantyre. The title-track song eventually went to number one on the Malawian charts, where it stayed for three months in early 2006. The band celebrated by parading through the streets of Blantyre in the back of a truck for World Food Day. A great crowd of small children swamped the vehicle, all singing along to Ngati Mafunde at the top of their lungs.

The Sangalala Band is the first cross-over band in Malawi, which has become dominated by Afro-Reggae and copy-cat artists. They played in the finals of the Kuche Kuche national music awards in April 2007, challenging racial stereo-types and perceptions of traditional Malawian music, which is the backbone of the Ngati Mafunde album. The Sangalala band is still playing in Malawi, but Kenny now resides in Manchester, UK, where he works as a secondary school teacher, plays local gigs, and organizes international music projects to promote Malawian music. His first major work, Deep Roots Malawi, is a joint production with Promote Africa. Click here to learn more.

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