Performing Luo Identity in Kenya: Songs of Gor Mahia

Abstract

For the Luo community, Gor Mahia FC is a cultural icon in the sense that the club provides the space in which it is able to engage in the construction of identity within the contemporary Kenyan nation-state. We can take cognizance of the observation by Clifford Geertz (1972: 1–37) that communities inscribe their culture through play. In this light, Gor Mahia can be viewed as a cultural phenomenon whose signifi- cance is experienced in performance through various media. Such media includes music, which for the Luo, as in other African societies, plays a significant role as a medium through which the community embodies its values. Several musicologists have remarked on the significance of music in African social life. Kwabena Nketia (1974: 21), for instance, has observed that in the case of traditional African societies,

… music making is organized as a social event. Public performances, therefore take place on social occasions — that is occasions when members of a group or a community come together for the enjoyment of leisure, for recreational activities, or for the performance of a rite, ceremony, festival, or any kind of collective activity, such as building bridges, clearing paths, going on a search party, or putting out fires — activities, that, in industrialized societies, might be assigned to specialized agencies.