Voicing Familial Struggles: A Critical Analysis of Child Images in Selected Kenneth Khaemba’s Popular Songs

Abstract

Familial struggles, though often glossed over and rarely voiced, form the very cartography of a community’s history. Considering this, scholarship accords so little attention to the multifaceted meanings embedded in child images, particularly as these images can themselves be powerful expressions of those same familial struggles, especially within popular songs. The neglect seems to emanate from the relegation of Indigenous knowledge and foregrounding the adult in an adult/child dyad. Nevertheless, popular songs, as one of the popular cultural forms, provide a platform for reading about the familial struggles in contemporary society. In this paper, using the Luyia community, and Kenneth Khaemba’s popular songs the paper seeks to investigate the child images as a (re)presentation of the family as a site of struggles. The paper is anchored on the premise that popular songs, vide child images, are a vital avenue in understanding the contemporary community. In achieving this end, the paper uses the ideas of Globalectics theory as propounded by Ngugi wa Thiong’o in particular, the perception of a community’s verbal arts, specifically folklore, as being at the center of comprehending the lives of members of any community. Individual community, globalectically, is equidistant to any community in the globe. Before subjecting the songs to discourse analysis, Khaemba’s popular songs were listened to and transcribed and translated into the two purposely sampled songs, namely ‘Mayi Mutiti’ (Little Mother) and ‘Mayi Muro’ (Step Mother). The study used the presence of a child narrator in the songs as the parameter for the selection. The findings of the study demonstrated that the child image in Khaemba’s songs is literary and, therefore, is a canvas for insights into the struggles of Luhyia community.