The Kenyan DJ and Sound Artist Alai K transforms the Hall of Columns of the Weltmuseum Wien into a powerful sound space and creates a spiritual soundscape for the ‘Cosmological Tales of Connection’ which Tabita Rezaire addresses in her current exhibition. With driving Mijikenda rhythms, flickering electronics and an evocative voice, he invites visitors on a sound journey that combines the rich sound heritage of the Swahili Coast with global club culture and spiritual storytelling. For Alai K, sound is a form of memory, of transmission and re-imagination of ancestral knowledge.

As a founding member of the legendary Kenyan hip hop collective ‘Ukoo Flani,’ Alai K first appeared on the underground scene in Mombasa, mixing Swahili lyrics with Hip Hop. Today, he plays at festivals such as ‘Sonic Pluriverse’ and ‘Durchlüften Festival’ in Berlin and releases his records a.o. on the buzzling scene label “Nyege Nyege Tapes” in Uganda. He was part of the Goethe Institute’s “Ten Cities” project and has collaborated with various African artists and labels, including “SISSO Records”, the founders of the Singeli sound in Dar es Salaam.
Alai K’s music is really a road map of his life, weaving together the musical influences that have surrounded him over the years: the spiritual music of the Bajuni, the traditional rhythms that surrounded him growing up around Mombasa in Kenya, the Swahili hip-hop scene, 21st-century dance floor Afro-house, electronica and techno of Kenya and Uganda and, these days, Berlin’s underground club scene. They all add up to the serious sonic and dance floor contender that is his new album Kila Mara, released on the always fascinating UK label, On the Corner Records.

There was always music around him in Kenya. He tells me, “if you’re happy, if you’re sad, if someone is dead or there is a wedding… it’s all music bringing people together, removing stress.” When he was still in the womb, he would have heard the trance and spiritual music that his father played at weddings, funerals and other ceremonies, which his mother also attended. “I found that I was just into music, I didn’t look for it anywhere, I just found it inside me. And I said, OK, I want to make music. So, I was singing all the time when I was young… a different kind of music.” His mother told him of his great-grandmother, a Malawian singer and composer, and of his father, a professional drummer and leader of musicians at ceremonies, such as the week-long forest celebration of Alai’s birth, his first-born son. “My father and my great-grandmother passed it to me in a spiritual way, and I went to find that music and the people who played it.”