Three members of Quartet Kenyan alternative music group Just a Band. Image: Joe Were. Sourced from Band's Facebook page, used with permission. Just a Band, Kenya's top house/funk/disco/alternative music band, and the makers of Africa’s first viral video announced their comeback on May 16, following a six-year hiatus. The band's fictional Kenyan superhero-inspired protagonist Makmende went viral in 2009 after he was featured in their music video “Ha-He.” Makmende went on to become Kenya's first internet meme. The video would portend a paradigm shift in Kenya's music industry as musicians began challenging assumptions of what made music Kenyan and started looking toward the internet in a bid to bypass entertainment gatekeepers who defined the country's musical identity. After Just a Band announced their return, I began reflecting on how much has changed in Kenya's music scene as well as its political and socio-economic landscapes. So, why is their return so significant, is it likely to redefine Kenya’s musical identity and how much has the Kenyan alternative music landscape changed since “Ha-He” first debuted? Kenyan music defies definition. It has been described as a country constantly searching for a musical identity. Its sound is easily swayed by the influences of rhumba, Afropop, trap, hip hop, Afrobeat, soul, and RnB, making it endearing to a variety of audiences. Ever since the 1970s, Benga, a genre of popular Kenyan music originating from Nyanza province in Western Kenya, secured its permanent place in Kenya’s musical identity. Fast forward to the present day and the sound has withstood the test of time, even as new sounds emerge to blend other African and global genres. In 2019, the Gengetone genre rose to become the dominant sound in Kenyan music. It has injected new life into Kenya’s music industry and in its own way, brought back a sense of patriotism in a country that has for the last several years witnessed infighting in its artistic communities and media outlets, due to the excess airplay given to foreign music. As a veteran Kenyan veteran arts and culture blogger, I have been covering the arts and culture scene since 2005. This inadvertently gave me a front-row seat as Kenyan music went back into its history and back into the present, dipping in and out of other genres in a bid to find its own voice amidst a changing culture brought on by a new generation of listeners whose taste was heavily influenced by global mainstream genres. It did not help that our Tanzanian neighbors and distant relatives in Nigeria and South Africa had gotten there long before us. Our musicians soon found themselves shouting themselves hoarse as their voices drowned in a sea filled with Bongo, Afrobeat, and Kwaito on radio and in the clubs. Just a Band is a four-man music group made up of Bill “Blinky” Sellanga, Dan Muli, Mbithi Masya, and Jim Chuchu. The group dismantled collective conventional wisdom around what Kenyan music should sound like. They were the vanguards paving the way for alternative, eclectic, experimental music in Kenya. It was a sound that didn’t need to lean on Nigeria’s Naija, Tanzania’s bongo, or South Africa’s kwaito. The first time I heard Just A Band’s songs from their debut album “Scratch to Reveal” in 2008, I knew that my long-held preconceived notions of what Kenyan music is or is supposed to sound like had just shifted. The songs “Ha-He” and “Iwinyo Piny” were fresh and different. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard, yet, it was as Kenyan as could be. Despite their eclectic sound that experimented with elements of Jazz, hip-hop, disco, and electronica, the group found it hard to break into the mainstream music scene To my chagrin, I watched as the house/funk/disco trio that gave us Makmende took a hiatus just as this genre they had birthed and nursed was fledgling. As noted in their announcement, much has changed and all of us have grown. However, the embers of the fire they started in 2008 have been smoldering in the underground of Kenya’s digital entertainment webs. In March 2010, “Ha-He” a single by Kenya’s Just a Band went down in history as Africa’s first viral video after it set the internet on fire via YouTube. That act of uploading a video online helped Just a Band push through the entertainment gatekeepers into the pantheon of Kenyan music making them the first band to leverage the internet to cultivate and grow their fanbase directly.