# habari gani, mzuri sana # wageni, wakaribishwa # kenya yetu, hakuna matata # kenya nchi nzuri, hakunay it went. the tourists were just crazy about this song. #jambo, jambo bwana! it went silver, then gold, then platinum. that came as a complete surprise to me. # wakaribishwa, hakuna matata! i started the group, them mushrooms, in 1972. me and him were working at the cement factory in mombasa. there was a lot of tourists coming into mombasa, so it was a really vibrant scene in mombasa. we were playing mostly congolese stuff, and kenyan music, and whatever, but when we realised we could make more money and play for less time for the tourists and hotels, we switched to playing disco cover versions of pop music from europe and from america. one night, i think it was late, 1979, i was sitting at the pool bar after a performance, and there were these tourists in the pool, playing around and joking, trying to speak swahili, "jambo, hibari, hakuna matata," you know, and i got this idea. maybe i should write a song with the simplest words in swahili, and get the tourists to sing along and danc

hakuna matata, you know? a song with the simplest words and get the tourists to learn the language while they sang and danced to our music. it says, "hello, hello, how are you?" then a reply. it says, "all visitors are welcome. "there are no problems in kenya." a very simple song. whenever we finished, another tourist would come over and say, can you do this song? we had to do about 20 times. and then the financial director of polygram said, here is my card, you call me. i want to record this song. we didn't know it was going to be this big. like they say, the rest is history, after the recording, the rest was history. when we signed that agreement with polygram at the time, i didn't know much about copyright ownership, we were just happy to have our music recorded and so many people wanted to do cover versions of it. most kenyan say this is the song not for us kenyans. but they are proud of it — that at least it has given some kind of identity to kenya. any canyon that goes overseas,, you know the song? they

. # kenya yetu hakuna matata... # kenya nchi nzuri... # hakuna matata. .. that's the way it went.azy about this song. #jambo, jambo bwana... it went silver, then gold, then it went platinum. that came as a complete surprise. i started the group them mushrooms in 1972. me and him were working with the cement factory in mombasa. there was a lot of tourists coming into mombasa, so it was a very vibrant scene in mombasa. we were playing mostly congolese stuff and kenyan music and whatever. but when we realised that we could make more money and playing for less time for tourists in the hotels, we had to switch to playjust cover versions of chart music from europe and from america. one night, i think it was late 1979, i was sitting at the pool bar after a performance and there were these tourists in the pool playing around and joking, trying to speak kiswahili. "jambo! habari? nzuri sana. haku na matata." you know? and i got this idea, maybe i should write a song with the simplest words in kiswahili and get the tourists to learn kiswahili while they sang along and danced to our music. #