ONE LUO project is anchored around one Engineer Javan McAjudo, the musically everything of this project. I met Javan some time in 2020. On 25th April 2020 at 15.27 when I received a what’s app message from a German based Luo lady by the name Nyang’iya. Nyang’iya who was on home visit in Kenya was typing excitedly at her discovery. “Fathe,” like she like calling me. Because she went to school with my daughter and is a great friend of my niece and even a greater friend of a late cuz Min Loch. “Imagine I found this ohangla player sitting just jamming at a keyboard. I asked him to play for me a western pop song. Listen to what he can do. Fathe you must interview this keyboard wizard for your blog.”
Nyang’iya attached an audio. By then I was thinking of supposedly “bigger names” to write about, but Nyang’iya persisted. What killed me and stopped me is when I mentioned the name of a household artist as my next subject. Nyang’iya blatantly told me “If you even type his name in your blog in any way, I will disown you. I will cease to call you, father.”
With Covid and everything else including the writing of my book I forgot about this wonderful new artist. It was only when songstress Iddi Achieng my cousin allowed me to use her song to introduce my book launch video that the gently struck keyboards caught my attention.
The sound McAjudo produces in Mine Nyalo is as if his hands caress the keyboard with the same tenderness that Iddi Achieng beseeches “Nyi Luo.” You listen to his works, and you can feel and hear the keyboard and the human voice come together as one inseparable oneness. It is an impossible union. It is the same union heard in the ONE LUO project song.
For every song verse sung by any one of the eight ONE LUO project, Javan MacAjudo just sprinkles stardust with a caressing finger on the keyboard and the artist is in one ness. It is surreal. It is a signature that cannot be replicated. And it is impossibly gifted to us.
In the beginning
The impossibly gifted McAjudo was born Javan Onyango Otieno from the Nyakach KaSaye clan of the Luo of Kenya. At an incredibly youthful age Javan lost his father and was raised by a single mum. Given the challenges of living among paternal uncles who traditionally were supposed to be the guardians, they shifted residence to suburban Ahero for the family to be able to subsist.
Life was not always easy given the pariah nature that such childhood attracts. Little Javan got the tough end of the deal. However, some how he came out to be the finest keyboard player ever on this side of Africa let alone in Luo land. To get to that we must first of all get to his interest in music.
Javan recalls a certain fondness for a Benga King Owino Misiani that had a percussive like striking of the guitars in the speedy Benga style. He liked the song so much he fashioned a complete set of toy band instruments. He then proceeded to mouth the sound of each instrument like he heard it. Given the unbalanced stereo work and the nature of Benga songs some instruments took prominence at certain stages of the song then progressively petered towards the end. Little genius Javan would also mimic the sound with his mouth depending on which instrument was prominent. It was a mouthful and heavy work. He would do it repeatedly and until he ended up sweating even when performing to himself alone in the house.
What was not clear to the naked eye is that just like say the great American Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles developed a keen sense in sound and smell, little genius Javan also was developing stronger senses in matching what he can hear and what he can produce. Ray Charles became blind as a preteenager after getting blinded walking the cornfields and Stevie Wonder became blind after some lazy nurse oversupplied the oxygen levels. Both were born without the natural balance to overcome blindness. They just developed these abilities out of necessity. It is the same with Javan that nature did not correct this imbalance. He just developed these skills by throwing himself at mimicking sounds with great abandon.
After relocation to the suburban Ahero, Javan, like any deprived boy, found solace in the church. He started worshipping in the church of renowned televangelist Prophet David Owuor. Every evening, he would listen to boys playing keyboards, but his church had no keyboard.
One day it was announced that the church wanted to recruit young boys to train to play the piano. This was a dream come true. Javan put his name forward. However, like in any society, bigotry takes the front seat. In such a community those who are seen to be struggling do get a raw a deal. The bias of the community is against them. Javan, coming from a deprived family met this bias head on. This is not unusual for any community. The biblical parables are rife with such biases like the Pharisees. It is not only Kano people of Ahero. Javan was ejected. Worse still, he was not even allowed to watch choir practices.
That was it and church piano lessons. Javan did not even look back. However, his musical senses continued to develop even when just listening to somebody whistling while riding a bicycle. He could tell when the cyclists were bound to break to breathe in. Meanwhile the teaching went smoothly to these lot of boys who just wanted to learn the skill.
Like Americans like saying. There are three things you do not mess around with. Mother God and Mother nature. The other one I cannot say. One day, the rain came down and interrupted the practices. For some reason it was decided that the house with the most civil and obedient parent and children (Javan) was Mama Javan’s house. Some how mother nature came, and God chose Mama Javan’s house as the most secure because of Javan’s submissive pious behavior. It appears the way he ceded the chance to be a piano student did not go unnoticed.
With the keyboard in his house Javan started studying the instrument and the keys very closely. There was no electricity in the house so it was obvious that he could do nothing, even with the appliance in touching distance before the next session. Then he noticed the magic no 12volts. The very twelve volts that was on the battery cells. Using simple reasoning he knew that the voltage being similar nothing untoward would come to the keyboard if connected. Like the Nazi prisoner in the movie, “The Piano Player,” Javan did his wiring connection. He saw the magic lights and knew the Piano was a live. Since the light was steady, he was sure nothing had gone wrong.
He started playing the piano but like the character in the movie could not touch the keys. Then in one of those misjudged distance between the keys and his little finger he touched the key and heard the sound, and it was good. Using his sense of hearing he knew where it fitted in Owino Misiani song.
Then he guessed another one and another one. By connecting the series, he started guessing the keys and the sound and what the next key is likely to be. What! He was playing the keyboard! By midnight on 15th January 2006, Javan Onyango Otieno aka Javan McAjudo played his first keyboard.
Just by listening to sound and being able to predict where the next series is Javan was playing the keyboards. Like Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles Javan figured his way on a Keyboard without being taught in one night.
Anointing
At the next church service, it just happened that the keyboard player was absent. He just failed to show up. There was no local player in the church by then. So, the pastor wanting to justify that today even if there is no piano player, they had tried to get the music going. “So,” the Pastor asked. “Is there anybody who can play the piano in the church?”
Out of excitement, more than anything Javan raised his hand up and was invited to approach where the keyboard was. Then walking to the keyboard, he was shaking. Looking down at the congregation he was nervous. The moment he started to concentrate on the task of synchronizing the sound in his head to the keys, he forgot everybody else. He does not even remember seeing the faces of the congregation. And at the end of the day everyone commented on how confident and reassured he was playing the keyboard. But that was not all.
The pastor was so impressed by how Javan was soulfully committed to the keyboard playing on that day, that he called for the 5-littre jar of anointing oil and used the whole of it on Javan.
The best drama was at home. When Javan arrived home Mama Javan was shocked to see his son arrive home in drenched clothes as if he had been immersed in some oily liquid. After he explained everything, mama jokingly and proudly started calling him jadolo. Just a pet nickname.
Still worldly challenges did not leave him alone especially at form three stage when the first 2 years of school fees paying drained the family. Most dropouts due to school fees are usually at this stage. This is when Javan’s stipend of Shs 300 playing voluntary fees helped stump Mama Jan’s school fees.
KCPE
His legend had spread around. Locally he was very respected. After KCPE, a cousin invited him to Nairobi for a visit. Unbeknown to Javan, the cousin, a strong music enthusiast wanted to learn how to play the keyboard. He had even bought a Casio keyboard. He was a working gentleman.
In Nairobi one day he calls Javan with his kidology name, “Tufte, as a jadolo play for me something.”
And life continued like that until a family friend, Jason Karua, a mugithi musician with instruments got interested in what Javan can do. Javan visited his studio and noted how expats got to work in a busy place. Karua also was watching Javan and noted how Javan was good at beats.
Mama Javan also had not given up on this musical career and through aid from a local NGO helped Javan enroll at the college for Media studies. He was studying engineering at a college. At college, he was better than the average student.
However, the childhood scars kept on appearing. He was a star in denial, always denying how good he really was. He was always unorthodox but resolving things that the others found hard to resolve. Sometimes sampling or resolving assignments faster than everybody else.
Fortune favors daring. One morning the lecturers went on strike for 4 months late salaries. On that morning, like students on free he was playing Brandson song, True (that I am not the only one). The director happened to be doing the rounds trying to hold on to some normalcy in the campus. It was such a perfect rendition that the director summoned Javan to the office.
At the office, the director asked him if he could teach a piano class by assessing him to simulate a presentation of a lesson to a piano class. To make a long story short he landed a contract of Shs 500 per head which he used to pay college fees. At the end of the semester, he was still owed a balance of Shs 30,000 over and above the college fees.
One day a choir from Kakamega came to record and the lecturer in charge Mr. SS could not configure how to use the six microphones at once. Javan noticed him sweating profusely. Being a person who has witnessed at first hand being denied a helping hand, he knew the value of a helping hand. He did not wait for Mr. SS to ask let a lone fail. All he said to Mr. SS, “Wacha nikusaidie.”
At the end of it all he made the six microphones work, then turned to SS and said, “Hii soundcard has 10 channels, enda leta microphones 4 zingine.”
Mr. SS asked him, “Javan, where did you learn all this stuff.”
Javan answered, “Sir I just came for the papers this college can offer me.”
Out of this, the college launched a Media record course, and they now have a producer.
Up to this point Javan has demonstrated unparalleled humility and a heart to help those who need help without asking for money first.
BACK TO AHERO
Because of his religious background, Javan did not want to walk a faithless world. He could not perform at night clubs. At Ahero there was a former teacher who played for Catholics. So Javan joined the former teacher and scrapped with life out of clubs. He only took the offer of Shs 500 to play at the clubs when VkM convinced him that he would guarantee his security at a club called Embassy.
It is this period of working the joints in Ahero town that by fate a by then musician Wuod Fibi came to perform in town. Javan was still working VkM. Still Javan could not strike it on his own because he had swapped a laptop for a musical instrument. The lap top he had been gifted by a local civic official by then known as councilors. When it came to the crunch now, he needed a laptop. It was like this joke Nairobi matatu operators used to throw salt on a private motorist with a stalled vehicle that was causing a jam. “Mzee si uuze Engine ununue petroli”
On this occasion VkM was a curtain raiser for Wuod Fibi. It is unfair to say that Wuod Fibi was impressed because Javan stole the show. He was the star of the day even though he was just supporting the support act. In football, terms it is like saying the player who was not even dressed was given a shirt and became man of the Match. Only one person has done that in living memory.
Luo Union FC midfield ace Nicodemus Arudhi was brought out Kamiti prison to play a game to save the face of Kenya national team on the independence celebrations of 1963. Arudhi was serving a sentence for petty kleptomania. The then all-powerful cabinet Minister Tom Mboya watched Ghana National team whitewash Kenya something like 15-1. Legend has it that it was so bad that President Jomo Kenyatta watching next to Emperor Haile Selassie and his two lion cubs turned to Tom Mboya, and asked “Wapi Kipchoge Keino?”
Legend or not the next day Tom Mboya received a prison van that brought Nicodemus Arudhi Ogwanjo wuod Salome to save Kenya. The game was tied 2-2. There is a parallel here that I had to learn later in football management. Geniuses like Kenyan wing wizard Eric Omonge live a life of their own. It is the same with the likes of journalist Philip Ochieng and Prof Pius Ben Muga Ouma, Barack Obama Senior, John Cods. I saw three of these guys at close quarters. If you want the best, put up with their minor irritants the way Tom Mboya put up with Nicodemus Arudhi’s kleptomania. I saw that in close quarters working with a genius of a player, Charles Otondi Loketo. Another impossibly gifted football player.
Wuod Fibi saw the wonderment of Javan McAjudo and invited him to Nairobi’s Barakiwa studio until the world got in the way, just like the way the world always gets in the way.
In 2018 Javan joined with another music producer, by the name of Mamman. It was a lucrative offer. As Mario Puzzo wrote in his book, with characters like Javan McAjudo, you have to make them believe that you are the only person they fear to offend. Treat them like they own you even if you own them. This is because in military terms they own half of the battalion. Mamman failed to realize that Javan McAjudo was all he had as a battalion. He made fatal error after fatal error.
The relationship started well. The payment terms was Kshs 7,000 per song. To reduce the amount of number crunching it was simply made that Javan McAjudo was to generate Kshs 150K per month and the rest is his. The target was so easy for Javan sometimes it wanted to hang fruits. By the third week of the month, he usually had hit his targets. Then Mamman got greedy. Still the thrill of production made Javan ignore all the inconveniences of missing his hard-earned money. As long as he had a roof over his head in Nairobi and a meal a day he was sorted.
Then Mamman and his associates went on a global grove- a-thon tour. Javan assumed that at least Mamman would make up for the back log of payments. Still nothing from the grove-a-thon was shared. Then Mamman who was infatuated with a lady working In England as mystery shopper making big bucks requested Javan to pull all stops and compose a complete song in honor of Havana Rakatan. Havana job as a mystery shopping agency was to be hired by giant corporate services providers. Her job was to say walk in a restaurant with company card and wine, dine and dance while noting how the customer was treated. It was a job tailored for a Luo woman. Havana could fly anywhere in the world and issue reports. In other words, Havana was being paid to have fun.
However, Interpol hired this time Havana to unmask Kenyan prostitutes who were crying foul of rape by English premiership footballers. Premiership clubs, Leeds, Arsenal, Manchester United and Leicester had been reeled on fake scandals. Havana successfully busted that ring by posing as a Kenyan prostitute. She was heavily rewarded and Mamman was after this money.
Javan decided to assess the loyalty of Mamman. He composed two songs and kept the main songs. Like a fool Mamman quickly released the B song as his. He did not even bother to say thank you to Javan let alone pay him. Now Javan had him numbered. The relationship was dead.
Then things went calm for a while. But silence was just the calm before the storm. One day in the middle of a recording act with key musicians, Mamman pounced with a van with a list of everything that Mamman had purchased for the business. The list included even a doormat. To make it worse the reversed eviction was being recorded live on social media to inflict further damage to his career.
It was such a spectacle that instead of the humiliation McAjudo received a maximum outpouring of sympathy from patrons and well wishers from the music fraternity who replaced all the instruments. Miraculously when Javan went to sleep he had completed the day’s planned activity as if nothing had happened.
The planned attack gave Javan brand new equipment plus an immeasurable pouring of emotional support from even passersby. In other words, Javan ended the day richer. From that date onwards the world waited with abated breadth for the fall of Mamman.
Unfortunately, the world menace of Covid struck and everyone hibernated. But lack had not run away from Javan. An exceptionally good lady Samaritan by the name Vivi-Vivianne went on the hassling offensive to support Javan.
After Covid Javan, like any sensible businessperson went on a 70% -30% business partnership with Wolfman Jack. They were charging a modest Kshs 5,000 per track. It was picking well. All this time Javan had a youthful football player mentality. All he wanted was the joy of playing music. Winning was not everything. But like Americans say, “Winning is not everything, but loosing is nothing.”
Javan discovered that truly he had nothing. Wolfman Jack wanted them to share Rent and expenses on 50-50 basis despite the lopsided sharing of proceeds. When he protested, the partner sought the advice of Mamman. This time the partner again came for everything including the mattresses as if they were auctioneers. In Javan’s good luck all these clearances found him with clients. Again, clients rescued him.
Javan found his feet in 2022 and now started building his stable of artists. But misfortune had not left him alone and his mother became poorly. It is something that he did not like and would gladly trade his equipment and being evicted on CNN or sky sports at half time of a Man United Versus Arsenal game, but not his mother. He could take evictions everyday at lunch time but not his mother. He does not wish anybody the suffering of a loved one. Not even Mamman and Wolf man Jack.
Things improved and he got his band together.
ONE LUO
Javan McAjudo likes idea of ONE LUO because this will eliminate the four key hindrances to the music industry in Kenya. The main one being what he calls jo Oporo.
Jo Oporo is a term that denotes armchair producers with loudmouth and no skills. Once they engage an artist and take their money, they switch off the mobile phones.
Then there are those who bad mouth aspiring artists to bring them down. In other parts of the world, they are known as PhD guys to mean Pull him/her down.
The lack of information is not just an impediment in the industry. Competitors fear knowledgeable young musicians. Access to information and freedom of information is something those who want to oppress artists do not appreciate. It all well covered in the Swahili saying, “Mujinga akirevuka, mwerevu yuko mashakani”
Finally, competitors are afraid of stubborn perfectionists all over the world, not only LUO or Kenyan musicians. McAjudo says, “The problem with me is that I would be nothing without my music. I live for my music. When I am in it, I can see what is wrong with a song so clearly. Admittedly I am not patient with other musicians. I hurt a lot when I see a young artist’s ego deflated because I have hurt their pride. Remember I was swatted like a green fly at mealtime as youth for no reason at all.”
McAjudo adds, “When I am alone and reflect on whether I was careless with a young artist. Believe me it hurts and brings back my own childhood humiliation. I promise to work on it and turn it around.”
He finishes the interview promising to control what he may not be able to chain. Impossibly gifted people are like that. I should have known I worked with Otondi Loketo and saw the great economist at close quarters.
Sometimes gifted people act out of impulses that they cannot control act that way. In the light of the morning, they regret their action because they cannot bring themselves to associate with that act.
For example, Javan McAjudo has a ridiculous habit. His mind records the dates and time of every incident in his life. These days he backs it with video recordings. If say you provoke Javan into retaliation hoping that your provocation is not seen, you are wrong. Javan may even have a photo or video recording of your provocation. I am a very superstitious person. I think the French coach Arsene Wenger must have modelled football video refereeing, VAR from Javan McAjudo. FIFA owes Javan a cut. Jokes aside, you have been warned.
For us the innocent bystanders, Javan McAjudo will keep on floating like a pretty butterfly and sometimes, just sometimes sting like a bee but you are guaranteed endless dripping honey.
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