Coster Ojwang doesn’t believe he is a star. In fact, he says, his sister, Lydia, got the better singing gene in the family. Hard to believe when he can do it all: a musician, a songwriter, a composer, an instrumentalist, a painter.
If you had never listened to his music and only read the press briefings, you’d be left with a sense of bigness: big voice, big manner, big entertainer. He is, by any measure, a big fish. All vibrato and tears.
His music is a chant to the gods, rooted in the garden of tradition and fused with Luo heritage and African rhythms in the guise of the likes of Ayub Ogada and the Ugandan Geoffrey Oryema and the Beninese-French singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo, and the Senegalese Youssou N’Dour.
When does he know a song is well baked? “You just know,” he says. “You just have to have that ear.” But there is a difference between a good artist and an artist who makes good music.
"Someone who makes good music might not pass as a good artist for other people, but then good artists sometimes make good music."
“Someone who makes good music might not pass as a good artist for other people, but then good artists sometimes make good music.”
For him, that “good music” was Manyo Pesa, a dirge about those who have made it and those who are in the process of making it, in this Nairobi city that “would kill you if you wasted time on yesterday.”
Pain, hunger, and poverty, he says, is the trifecta that keeps hold of him. “I really want to inspire people and leave a trail of excellence. I hope God guides my creation, and I make songs that fix the moments in people’s lives, and fill the spaces in their lives.”
He namechecks Okello Max and Apesi as musicians who laid the red carpet for his talent. “I want to open up the Kisumu market more. There are so many musicians there who don’t get to see success.”
As a painter, he works in a contemporary-impressionist style, using bold colours and strokes. His art has been exhibited in Nairobi, the Netherlands, the US, and Australia.
–Eddy Ashioya