Utawala hitmaker Juliani says youth already successful in pushing change

The song on the lips of family and friends and colleagues of rights activist Boniface Mwangi was all too familiar.

They passionately sang Utawala (Governance), a song by hip hop artiste Julius Owino, more famous by his stage name Juliani, repeatedly reciting its refrain, the catchiest bit for its rhythmic rhyming, outside the Pangani Police Station in Nairobi last Sunday.

“Sitasimama maovu yakitawala,” the chorus by the activists, defiantly punching in the air, went.

Some of them had lip-synced when their counterparts sang other liberation choruses. Utawala was the only one everyone looked like they knew.

Many Kenyans, young and old, know the song by heart. Throughout the last decade, it has featured in anti-government demonstrations, led by the opposition and flag-waving Generation Z, and blared at pro-governance concerts. The song has been on social media reels used to mobilise the youth to participate in protests.

Sitasimama maovu yakitawala loosely translates to I will not stand (watch) as evil reigns. The evils that this group of rights activists and members of civil societies at Pangani were against were Mwangi’s arrest and detention over links to recent anti-government protests.

A generation of young Kenyans, who say they refuse to be bystanders as their nation wastes away, have used the song as an anthem for their movement to ‘change’ Kenya. And they will chant it at protests, much like previous generations would Bado Mapambano (The struggle continues).

Juliani, 41, knew the song was special when he wrote it 12 years ago, he said in a virtual interview with the Sunday Standard on Friday.

“I knew it was a good song because I liked it and played it over and over again,” said an upbeat Juliani, who wore a Rastafarian bandana around his locks.

But the song, which media houses also had on repeat, was never meant to be a “whole song.”

“It was meant as a jingle for KTN, requested by John Allan Namu and Mohamed Ali (then investigative journalists at the TV station) for a montage,” said the rapper. “I did a whole song, and they would pick up a part they wanted for the jingle.”

Juliani’s music has always highlighted sociopolitical issues. When he wrote Utawala, he felt that he had mostly complained in previous songs without answering the question, “So what?”

“This was my so what song,” said Juliani.

Indeed, while the lyrics to Utawala point out the travails of ordinary Kenyans, they challenge them to watch out for poor governance  and be proactive against it. If you are strong enough to vandalise railway lines, Juliani sings, then lifting a ballot to elect a worthy leader wouldn’t break a sweat. 

Utawala, composed in Sheng, a mixture of Swahili and other languages largely spoken by the urban youth, was released ahead of the transitional election of 2013. Former President Mwai Kibaki was retiring after a tumultuous 10 years in office that began amid hope that Kenya was finally emerging from a dark era punctuated by ills like corruption and rights abuses that included torture.

Kibaki’s tenure was defined by economic upturn as much as it was by runaway corruption, which saw his political allies grow wealthier. But the real blot was the 2007/08 post-election violence, sparked by the declaration that Kibaki had won the presidential election, which the electoral commission and national and international observers agreed had been rigged.

Such were the prevailing circumstances when Juliani, who argued that assessments that Kibaki’s tenure was better were revisionist, wrote his hit. They were no different when he was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s.

As a boy, the hip hop artiste had “felt the world was ending” when he witnessed the police douse their neighbourhood of Dandora in tear gas and breaking down doors to homes during the Saba Saba protest of July 7, 1990, which saw multiple marches across Kenya.

“I felt more about feeling powerless. I felt like a victim throughout my life. I’d compare my life with what I saw on TV and, even then, knew that it made no sense,” said Juliani, born six years earlier.

He grew up admiring hip hop groups like Kalamashaka, Ukoo Flani Mau Mau and Mashifta, which rapped about sociopolitical issues. He credited Kalamashaka for introducing him and many others in Dandora to an “alternative identity” of music and not a life of crime that lured many youths from Nairobi’s ghettos and informal settlements.

Dandora, located about 10 kilometres from the city centre and home to a garbage dump that serves Kenya’s sprawling capital, had been the only world he knew.

“It was like a prison,” Juliani said, explaining that many like him from ghettos had been trapped in their spaces. Music introduced him to the outside world, and the outside world to him. He did not set foot in central Nairobi until he was 16, when he eventually met youth from other areas as he performed at ‘jam sessions’.

And they would spread word about Juliani to their “ghettos” because of his talents, which have seen him compose thought-provoking songs fit to feature in academic works, dissertations by the United States International University’s vice chancellor, Prof Mwenda Ntaragwi, and Reuben Kigame.

Juliani has outgrown Dandora. Kenya, too. In neighbouring Tanzania, the song has become a rallying call for Tanzania’s main opposition party, Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema), in clapping back against the ruling party’s growing dictatorship.

Juliani’s music has opened doors to global opportunities. In 2023, Juliani was a fellow of the Eisenhower fellowship, created in honour of former United States President Dwight Eisenhower, which aims to empower emerging global leaders and change agents.

Such are the opportunities only available through “uncaging” one’s mind, as Juliani did when he fought to chart his destiny. In many ways, Kenya’s youth have sought to break from the chains of poor governance and determine their destiny.

Change, Juliani said, was already achieved when the youth took individual responsibility for the good of the entire community. The ruling elite, he added, is in denial, hence its violent reaction to protests.

“A seed takes time to grow into a plant and flower, but it is growing. They (politicians) are weeds taking nutrients from the seedlings.”

Songs like Utawala have helped water this seed. The song has been an anthem for anti-government demonstrations, initially over a contentious tax-raising bill that President William Ruto fronted but withdrew amid mounting public pressure, and later over rights abuses.

The change is highlighted in the first verse of Utawala, which admonishes Kenya’s society for being self-centred and only capable of sharing busaa – a traditional brew among communities in western Kenya made from maize, drunk amid small talk – and a kettle of shisha.

Doubtless, the busaa drinkers he referred to were members of the older generation, with the shisha-smokers reference likely targeting the younger generation, previously largely detached from the country’s affairs.

Last year, Kenya’s Gen-Z and Millennials, who make up more than two-thirds of the country’s population, joined hands to make ‘Kenya better’. On social media, they told the President and his government officials about the change they wanted to see, but were often dismissed, sometimes called unprintable references.

So they mobilised for waves of protests that shook Ruto’s administration to its very foundations. On June 25, 2024, hundreds of them stormed Kenya’s Parliament and set part of it ablaze, marking a turning point in the demonstrations.

In a song released two months ago, Moyo Wangu, Juliani blasts the police for “killing the youth for “eating rice at Parliament.”

He said he was inspired by how different persons – lawyers, content creators and tech-savvy youth – employed different skills to facilitate the revolt that woke Ruto’s administration from its slumber, albeit briefly.

He said he was not surprised that the youth rose to challenge an establishment they considered broken. As an artiste, he knew that society would catch up to music and the arts, which often predict revolutions.

“This is the revolution that we have been talking about,” Juliani said. “The revolution was the renewal of the mind – individual responsibility with communal benefit. You had to be blind not to see it.”

If Ruto had seen the revolt coming, he played blind until the storming of Parliament forced him into his road to Damascus moment. He withdrew the bill and sacked all but one cabinet secretary, but soon recycled most and signed a political deal with former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

The President promised to end abductions of state critics, which go on with increased intensity. The National Police Service has also retained its bloodthirstiness and has been accused of killing at least 115 young Kenyans in protests since June 2024. The Raila-led opposition also claimed more than 70 of its supporters died in anti-government demonstrations in 2023.

“If you are killing kids, it won’t matter even if you are a relative of Jesus,” added Juliani. “When you speak your mind, they, oestrogen-filled men, think you want to take away their power. It just shows how you are weak as a person.”