Kagwe Mungai
Nairobi, KENYA
Kagwe Mungai is a Kenyan Afro pop artist whose career was launched in 2013. His music has explored various musical directions such as, but not limited to dancehall, jazz, hip- hop, R&B and electronica.
At a young age Kagwe and his family moved to Johannesburg, South Africa. There he was immersed into the jazz and pop rock culture leading him to form both jazz and rock band, where he played drums and sang lead respectively. At age 13 he began pursuing a career in music. At 14, he was writing songs and developing ideas with a four-track recorder his older brother brought home one day. By age 16, he was introduced to Steve Jean, an accomplished music producer from Uganda, who taught Mungai the basics of production. Other influences include his music teacher in Nairobi, Moses Watatua, Michael Jackson, Pharrell, Quincy Jones, Fela Kuti, Oliver Mutukudzi and more.
He subsequently went to study Music at the University of Southampton in England and spent the rest of university learning his way around a recording studio and developing his debut mixtape (EP).
He released his debut EP, It Only Gets Better in 2013 accompanied by self-made music videos for the singles, “Oleku” . The music video for “Oleku” was successively selected as the best Kenyan Oleku cover in a survey held by Up Magazine Nairobi in 2013.