Even after 30 years plus, there’s some names you don’t forget.

My guy and I are running errands that are long overdue, lock down, social distancing and all.

I’m looking for a place to get a haircut because me and afros just don’t get along, plus one or two other things but most places in Central London where I live are shut down.

As a habit, when we walk around town, he describes what’s around me. The shops, the landmarks, sort of like an orientation thing so that I know what’s around me in what street.

He mentions the name Boosey & Hawkes.
I stop dead in my tracks. The last time I came across that name was in high school.

You had to be creative by force

Specifically in a lot of the music scores – what music we read to play some of the classics and best known tunes in our school band. Boosey & Hawkes did a lot of the instruments we used plus a lot of the musical scores for classic music like Minuet, Rinaldo and Trumpet No. 5. I’m thinking, I’ll be damned.

I have to come back here when – or if this shop is ever opened.
I tell my guy “you have no idea what memory you’ve just evoked”.

Back in the day, we did some outlandish shit in the school band. We had this thing where we tested our new stuff during Wednesday assembly.

That was when we trialled out our new music. Well, not new exactly, just cover versions of all the songs we were trying out.

The most valuable lesson I took away from high school, and something that guides me to this day is that we were expected to pull our shit together.

It didn’t matter what the challenge was, you had to use your creativity and talent to pull it off. Lord knows, in the school band, we pulled off some amazing stuff.

Greatness at the assembly

You have no idea how it feels when the entire student body of the school are jamming up and down to your tunes and it’s barely the first order of business in the day before the assembly.

We used to play popular folk hits like Chakacha, Mwenda wakwa Mariro (Shosho wakwa ni survivor, na sistako ni murasta), Nyambura (nakupenda like fish and chips), Asifiew and more.

Or when madness caught up with us, pop hits like La Isla Bonita, smooth Criminal, Dirty Cash and Jealousy by Stevie V, Rock me Amadeus, Rumazz by TSC and many more.

There was just that beautiful moment when even before the teachers checked into the assembly, the whole school was rocking and singing along to your tunes at 8 in the morning.

Even when we did more conservative pieces like hymns and gospel music, the atmosphere was always out of the world. I remember being nervous when I arranged the music for a popular hymn “Master the tempest is raging” and it was played for the first time by the band.

Forget being shocked, my eyes were welling with tears when the whole school was singing along “The winds and the waves shall obey my will, peace be still, peace be still”

It didn’t matter what songs we played for the assembly, even the teachers and Principal who walked into the hall after the senior school prefects and stood on the stage waited until we finished.

For some of the songs, you could even see one or two teachers shake a leg and a buttock as they walked into the hall, a smile plastered all over their face as the smile said “Dagamit!”. The energy was unbelievable.

We played many of the classic songs that we had to read from the musical score. Many of which had the Boosey & Hawkes name at the bottom of the musical sheets we were reading.

No room for defeat

But it wasn’t just the band. Patch had a culture of competition. As rabbles, there was absolute hell if you didn’t perform well. It didn’t matter whether it was inter-house cleaning competitions, drama festivals, music festivals, inter-house rugby tournaments like Blackrock and inter-house 7s and the league, if you didn’t perform or you lost, a thunder clap of punishment and fury would land on you from the senior prefects in the house for letting the house down.

Before the provincial and national drama and music festivals, whichever house won the event, the rest of the talent in the school would join the winning acts – whether it was the play, the traditional dance or the verse, everyone got together to bring out the best talent in the school.

Our day job as band members was to entertain all the schools from Nairobi – during Provincials – and all the schools from around the country that attended the Nationals.

Not surprisingly, many of our band members were also involved on stage, especially in the traditional dances.

This was serious business in a drive to maintain the reputation of the school. Take Olunga for example. He was a junior prefect when I was a rabble and at every opportunity he had, this guy made my life hell.

But when we were in the band together, or in the traditional dances where he was the soloist, Olunga was a consummate professional who mentored me, guided me, pushed me hard.

You didn’t know whether if you failed you were destined for some serious punishment like sleeping under his bed. When he turns around to you, lowers his trumpet and screams “Kute, concentrate, the drums.

You have to give us bounce. Focus!”. And that time his tapping his feet and snapping his hands to illustrate the urgency of the moment.
But when you see Olunga on stage – without his glasses – the fella was as blind as a Butalangi bat without his glasses – he was just magical.

Just like my good friend Masikhana, the Fresh Prince of Mumias. The worst thing you could do when performing the traditional dance on a stage during the Provincials was to glance at Masikhana who was the lead dancer pairing with a one Abhere Kidake.

Masikhana was as flexible as an eel, his body moving without effort to Opayo’s (Opiyo to the none-Amerukans) drum beats like he didn’t have a spine.

Our enemies were somewhat… Female

If that wasn’t bad enough, we had enemies in the first row of the audience. Nobody wanted Patch to make it through to the nationals, especially our so call friends, girlfriends and sisters from Moi Nairobi Girls aka Kabbz.

There’s you on stage, putting out your best, a smile plastered on your face as you dance and sing in response to Olunga’s solo “Wa duoko wa duoko wwer, Wer ma mio maro meil (We sing back to you, a song that makes the mother in law dance).

And just as Olunga does his mannequin pose of command mid-stage and demands “Nango?”, expecting our “Ma duoko wer, wer ma mio maro miel” response, the girls on the front row spread their legs apart for good measure, just to confuse you and throw you off your game on stage.

You can see their cheeky “Uta do?” smiles plastered all over their faces as you wonder whether to respond to Olunga and complete your song and dance routine or wonder whether the girls were waring panties or whether you just saw a pubic hair and they just unleashed their kitty cats to you Commando.