Daraja

Daraja Band is a music collective that focuses on live music for storytelling using a colorful repertoire of traditional as well as contemporary songs from the African continent and around the world.

Incorporating the Indian flute, the nyatiti, tablas, marimba the djembe and the guitar with vocals. Daraja uses music to tell stories about natural phenomena, to teach morality, provide a sense of African of identity, entertain, heal, instruct and wrestle with the mysteries of existence, life and death. Daraja’s music recognizes that I am because we are -“Ubuntu”.

We use music as education to explore the development of the powers that lie in man’s nature. It is not music to be consumed, but music to be enacted through the brain, body, and environment in an interactive manner. We see music as a regenerative tool of sense making and meaning making. Together as we make and experience music we enact our sense of self, the world, and our intimate, interconnectedness to the worlds in which belong.

From its origins as musical volunteers in support of Faraja Cancer Trust, the band also plays their unique blend of music at different community functions and events and continues to volunteer weekly to support children in music and art therapy at the Kenyatta hospital and at the Dr. Ribeiro unit for children with cerebral Palsy at Parklands Primary School.

Daraja’s musical experiences are communal and participatory, where together we apply instrumentality, song and negotiating movement in a regenerative discourse. Daraja uses music as a medium of social, cultural, mental and emotional edification. We focus on music as a regenerative tool for healing and a tool for education that creates new possibilities. Musiki ni Dawa, Musiki ni Elimu.