Kenyans are not immune to the global juggernaut of US popular music and listen to plenty of its genres: pop, hip hop and R&B among them. But it is country music that has a strong hold. Country song are regularly played on the radio. The Kenyan Broadcasting Corp has a weekly radio show,Sundowner, that often features country, while a private television station, 3 Stones, broadcasts a programme called Strings Of Country. Reminisce and the Galileo Lounge have weekly gigs, and the first country music fair in Kenya, the Boots and Hats Country Festival, took place in march.
Increasingly, Kenyan country singers are writing their own music about love and longing, in an American twang. A Dolly Parton-loving singer named Eather Kon-kara has recorded her own song, which are played on local radio stations. Otieno said he was planning a gospel album, and Carlos Piba, 25, another local artist, said he hoped to record country one day in Swahili, the national language.
The ultimate hope for these performers, no matter how improbable, would be to sing with their heroes.
“If I could share a stage with Charley Pride or Don Williams or Garth Brooks,” Otieno said, “it would be a dream come true,”
American country music has found audiences around the world, introduced by US soldiers to Japan, Korea, Thailand and Germany, and through Hollywood movies. Particularly devoted fan bases have grown inunexpected places like Australia, Jamaica and South Africa. Aaron Fox, a professor of rthnomusicology at Columbia University, theorized that country music caught on in urbanizing places, where it was embraced as a nostalgic counter to the loss of traditional values.
In Kenya, country music's popularity dates to the 1940s and crosses classes, but is especially pronounced in the central highlands, the country's farm belt. Many of the fans are over 50, but a younger generation who grew up listening to their parents' music also tune in. European settlers, mostly British, transported the music here during Kenya's colonial era, which ended in 1963.
"We took it up from them," John Obongo, host of Sundowner said of the Europeans. Country's appeal also stems from the relatively straightforward lyrics and slower tempos, he said. "Some pop music is too fast."
"Country music's stories of love, family, chivalry, the land, faith, roads and working-class life resonate with many people here," said David Kimotho, a director at 3 Stones TV, which receives up to 180 text messages requesting songs during each show, notably tunes by Kenny Rogers, Parton and Williams.
Kenyans, Kimotho said, "can identify with the stories in the songs". A type of music called Mugithi, a genre developed in central Kenya and traditionally sung with a guitar accompaniment in the Kikuyu language, has a country feel, giving its listeners an affinity for modern US country music.
Taste runs to the traditional artists like Jim Reeves, Rogers, Parton and Pride, said John Andrews, director of AI Records, Sony Music Entertainment's agent here. Country represents at least 15% of all CDs sold in Kenya, he said. Newer artists also receive some airtime.
"We play some Dixie Chicks and Carrie Underwood, but not a lot," Kimotho said, laughing.
Otieno was born in central Kenya and lived for some time in the small railway town of Kibigori. Guitar was his hobby growing up.
"My parents did not want me to go into music because the notion was that musicians were reckless, drunk and on drugs," Otieno said. But he persevered. He lived for a time in Norway and then the United States before returning to Kenya, where he went professional and rose from playing in small bars to being invited to perform in neighbouring countries.
"It took time, but now it has worked," he said
One of the few female country musicians here, Konkara 27, grew up in a village north of Nairobi and sang gospel in Kikuyu at church.
"We had potatoes, maize, beans, but the only thing we did not have were horses," she said, comparing her village with the American West. Konkara won a scholarship as a teenager to study at a music academy and now performs around the country.
"Just like Dolly Parton sings about her Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, I want to sing about the hills of Kiambu," she said.
The popularity of country music here encouraged CC Lamondt, a country music artist from South Africa who lives in Kenya, to organise the festival in Narirobi. "These guys can actually play," she said. "So we thought, 'This is an idea. Let's do this."
The day-long festival took place on the grounds of a racetrack, where fans sat on wooden bleachers and hay bales. Many were dressed for the occasion in jeans, boots cowboy hats and leather vests.
"Howdy!" said Kimotho, the television host, who was the master of ceremonies. "This is a country music festival, so we have to greet you in a country way."
Mary Kimani, 48, an information technology specialist who lived in the United States for three years - and sported a large belt buckle studded with rhinestones bought in Texas - was pleased with the performance.
"This music stands the test of time," she said.