In 2002 I participated at the annual Kora All African Music Awards ceremony in South Africa as Musical Director and guitarist for Kenyan nominee Eric Wainaina. The nomination followed the release of his debut album called "Sawa Sawa" which I co-wrote, produced, arranged, performed, recorded mixed and mastered back in 2000 and it helped Eric to get nominated for the prestigious Kora Awards and win the category 'Best East African Artist'. We traveled all the way from the U.S just to play a song "Nchi Ya Kitu Kidogo" live at the show. Apparently, our performance was being broadcast live to 400 Million viewers worldwide (that's just about 7% of the world's population). Good thing we didn't know that while on stage...



The 'Kora' event broadcasts every year via satellite from South Africa and serves as a recognition of musical and artistic excellence within Africa and its diaspora. The Awards are the first not-sportsman African event broadcast live in Africa, Europe, Asia. Since 2001 the event is also broadcast in USA and Canada. It was first broadcast in 1996 to 45 countries and in 2002 to viewers in 78 countries. Currently, there are 23 awards awarded under 23 categories.

Once every year all of Africa is glued to the T.V. on 'Kora night'. Eric was the first Kenyan ever to become nominated as a finalist as well as the first to bring home an award.

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TV-screen capture from our live performance at the show:

Mathias Künzli (perc), Matthias Bublath (kb), Lionel Loueke (g), Harvey Wirht (d), Eric Wainaina (v), Ben Zwerin (b), Mercy Myra (bv) and Christian Kaufmann (g)