In the East African music capital, Nairobi, the African Broadcasting Service once aired a mix of Cuban dance music, early Congo rumba and Zairean finger style guitar, along with South African kwela and traditional sounds mostly from Kenya's native Luo and Kikuyu peoples. But after construction of the first Kenyan recording studio in 1947, musicians inevitably set about defining a national sound. By the late '60s, guitar-based bands cranked out Luo songs in an energetic new style called benga that thrived for two decades and survives today.

Guitar pickers had long mimicked the quick, syncopated melodies of the Luo's eight-string nyatiti lyre. Now, as electric benga emerged, the nyatiti's push-and-pull character also influenced prominent electric bass lines. In benga, the hi-hat sizzles, the bass leaps and voices cry out high-pitched harmonies, while two or three guitars chase each other in sprightly interplay.

Born in 1940 in Shirati, Tanzania, the first lord of benga, Daniel Owino Misiani, formed his group Shirati Jazz in '67 and remained at or near the top through the 1980s. Alternating between ultra-fast guitar riffs and lead vocals, Daniel spun out dance hits, but also developed the down-to-earth poetry craved by East African pop fans. His antennae ever honed to popular themes, Daniel mostly sings about love, history and religion, depending on the mood of the moment.

Shirati's toughest competition has come from the Victoria Kings-A, B and C versions. Founders Collela Mazee and Ochieng Nelly Mengo grew up in Kenya near Lake Victoria, in the hot, dry hills that lead south to the Tanzanian border. Born in '54, young Collela had to hide his homemade guitar from disapproving parents. But after he joined Nelly to form Victoria Jazz in 1972, the pair hit Nairobi in time to bask in the glories of benga's golden age. By the end of the '70s, potent forms of Zairean pop threatened local Kenyan music to the point where Voice of Kenya radio discouraged all but East African pop on the airwaves, boosting benga to new heights. The Victoria Kings' humorous love songs, laced with advice on morality and good living, outsold other popular benga acts like George Ramongi, Gabriel Omolo, Sega Sega and Ochieng Kabeselleh.

Now in the age of cassettes, and hence cassette piracy, Kenya's traditionally record-based music scene has flagged. But the music plays on. Fast production times-with songs released in as little as two days-let pop singers converse with the timeliness of news commentators. Meanwhile, neo-traditional groups, notably Kapere Jazz Band, formed in 1986, and nyatiti player Ogwang Lelo Okoth are reviving the Luo roots of benga by returning to the one-string orutu fiddle, the nyatiti lyre, as well as Fanta bottle and other percussion.