In addition to my scholarly work, I write for a range of public platforms where questions of culture, history, identity, and politics demand a broader conversation. These pieces adapt the concerns of my research for readers beyond the academy. Selected links to this public writing and their outlets appear below.
Daily Nation, Kenya
On Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
I am among those interviewed in this Nation Africa piece by Daisy Okoti, reflecting on Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s significance for Kenyan and East African scholars of literature and on The River Between‘s enduring challenge to binary thinking. Written shortly after Ngũgĩ’s death on May 28, 2025, the article reflects on the novelist’s quiet but formative influence on a generation of Kenyan readers who encountered his work not through literary choice but through secondary school curriculum. The piece centers on The River Between (1965), which was prescribed as a set book in Kenyan schools until 2012, and gathers testimony from former students — now adults working across different fields — about what the novel meant to them then and now. Their responses converge on a shared pattern: the book was initially approached instrumentally, as an exam text, but its central tensions — tradition versus modernity, faith versus progress, belonging versus change — proved durable and continued to shape how they understood Kenyan society long after school. The article was published in Nation Africa on May 30, 2025.
Music in Africa
On the Centrality of Jazz in Africa
In this article I argue that jazz has been central to Africa’s cultural and political life, shaping struggles for freedom and narrating the continent’s histories. Figures like Louis Armstrong, Miriam Makeba, and Hugh Masekela transformed jazz into a transnational language of resistance, imagining “a wonderful world” even amid segregation and apartheid. Makeba’s voice energized liberation movements, while Masekela’s music expressed ubuntu and collective hope. Their work forged an image of an Africa marked by contrast yet committed to holding itself together. Though they are gone, their music endures, sustaining the continent’s ongoing fight to confront its colonial past and envision a more just future.
More here: https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/centrality-jazz-africa
Black Is King and the Mama Africa fallacy
In this article I argue that Beyoncé’s recent celebration of Blackness in Black Is King prompted some commentators to label her “Mama Africa,” but the title is historically and politically loaded. Miriam Makeba earned it through her profound contributions to African liberation, her exile, and the cultural work that made her voice inseparable from anticolonial struggle. While Beyoncé is evolving into a global cultural icon and channels elements of negritude alongside collaborations with African artists, her direct impact on the continent remains limited. Naming confers authority, and equating her with Makeba flattens distinct histories of sacrifice and political engagement. “Mama Africa” remains Makeba’s alone.
More here: https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/black-king-and-mama-africa-fallacy
The Standard Newspaper, Kenya.
Akothee: The Place of Artists in Our Society has Always Been Contentious
In this article, I reflect on the place of artists within African societies by comparing contemporary performance figures with established literary voices. Rather than reducing artistic practice to entertainment, I argue that artists occupy a contested moral and cultural role shaped by the histories and expectations of their communities. Using the Kenyan performer Akothee as my point of departure, I show how her public persona exposes the tensions between creative autonomy, social responsibility, and generational expectation. Her work demonstrates how African artists are continually compelled—fairly or not—to answer to broader ethical and political demands.
Singer Ogada and Ngugi are the Unsung Heroes of our Mother Tongues
In this article I reflect on the place of Ayub Ogada, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o in global conversations on African languages. I suggest that Ayub Ogada and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o are presented as artists who honour their mother tongues while articulating values that reach far beyond their communities. Ogada’s nyatiti-driven songs, rooted in diligence and responsibility, show how deeply local orature can resonate globally. Ngũgĩ’s Kenda Muiyuru, written in Gikuyu, similarly insists on the cultural and historical weight of telling stories in one’s own language. Both figures reveal that heritage is not parochial but a foundation for universal human values. Their work urges renewed attentiveness to cultural roots and reminds us that stories grounded in mother tongues can still speak across borders.
Sam Dennis 