In the years after independence, a new sound emerged from western Kenya and spread across the country. Benga music, with its distinctive guitar style, fast rhythm and Luo-language lyrics, became the soundtrack of independent Kenya. Musicians like D.O. Misiani, Oluoch Kanindo and later Ochieng Kabaselleh played at weddings, funerals, political rallies and roadside bars. Benga was not just music. It was a way of processing independence, urbanisation, poverty, love, death and joy. It was the voice of ordinary Kenyans finding their own language after colonialism.