The sound of music is filling schools and venues across Bungoma town in western Kenya as thousands of students gather for country’s National Schools and Colleges Music Festivals — an annual competition that brings together some of the country’s most talented young performers.
For the students taking part, reaching the national stage is itself an achievement.
For Stephen Asanga, a student representing Jamhuri High School in the capital, Nairobi, being at the festival is a moment of pride — not just for himself, but for his school and family.
“Reaching the nationals is a great achievement and honor for me,” Asanga tells TRT Afrika. “It gives me the opportunity to represent myself, my school and family. I will do my best to learn from others.”
His words capture one of the central attractions of the festival. While students compete for recognition, they are also given an opportunity to meet and learn from peers from different parts of Kenya.
And that diversity is what makes music particularly powerful.
For others , this festival offers a way to cross cultural boundaries and understand people whose traditions may be very different from his own.
“I work with different cultures through music by listening to and learning their songs, rhythms, instruments and traditions,” says Alfa Wainaina.
He tells TRT Afrika that the experience has taught him not only about music, but also about respect.
“I respect the difference between cultures and appreciate what each one brings to music,” he says.
As students from different communities share songs, rhythms, instruments and traditions, the festival becomes a meeting point for Kenya’s cultural diversity.
“By working together I learn from other people and they also learn from me,” Wainaina adds. “Building friendship and unity. Music is a universal language that brings different cultures together.”
But behind the performances and competition is another story — one of mentorship and the role music can play in shaping young people’s lives.
For Henry Wanjala, a music trainer at Jamhuri High School, the value of music became particularly clear during a difficult period when schools across Kenya were experiencing unrest, including incidents of school fires and destruction.
At the time, Wanjala says, they understood that simply teaching music was not enough.
“Music was 20%. 80% of the work we were doing was mentorship,” he tells TRT Afrika.
The teachers used the students’ passion for music as a way of reaching them, creating a connection that went beyond rehearsals and performances.
“Music is a piece of art that they love and we found that language that they connect with,” Wanjala says.
Through that connection, and collective effort with the rest of the teaching fraternity in the school, they were able to talk to students about discipline, dedication and the consequences of their actions.
For Wanjala, engaging the students in something they enjoyed gave them a positive alternative at a time when the unrest sweeping schools could easily have drawn them in.
“We were lucky we engaged them with something positive they like so they wouldn’t be swept by the euphoria of destruction that was going on with schools unrest,” he says.
Now, as the national festival gets underway in Bungoma, those lessons are reflected in the students’ performances, in the discipline required to rehearse, the confidence to perform before an audience and the willingness to learn from others.
The festival may ultimately produce winners, but its impact reaches beyond certificates and trophies.
For students such as Asanga, it is a chance to make their schools and families proud.
For Wainaina, it is an opportunity to discover the cultures of others and build friendships.
And for teachers such as Wanjala, it is proof that music can be more than an extracurricular activity. It can be a powerful tool for mentorship, discipline and positive engagement.
In Bungoma, the young performers are therefore competing on stage, but they are also learning one of the festival’s most enduring lessons: that music can bring people together, despite their differences in culture, language and background.
