{"id":65711,"date":"2025-02-03T07:58:41","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T07:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/african-music\/makmende-the-kenyan-global-pop-icon-superhero\/"},"modified":"2025-02-03T07:58:41","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T07:58:41","slug":"makmende-the-kenyan-global-pop-icon-superhero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=65711","title":{"rendered":"Makmende, the Kenyan global pop icon superhero"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The video for the song Ha-he<\/em> by the Kenyan experimental pop music group Just a Band features a character named Makmende Amerudi as its protagonist. Within a week of its release on YouTube, Ha-he<\/em> received nearly 25,000 views and fans began creating their own original Makmende tales, videos, and artwork, leading global media outlets to label Makmende \u201cKenya\u2019s first viral internet sensation\u201d. Using a contemporary style of hand-held camerawork and shallow depth of field, the video\u2019s graphics, characters, and storylines are reminiscent of 1970s blaxploitation films. As the mysterious tough-guy protagonist, Makmende appears more comfortable sneering than smiling, and like other blaxploitation characters, he sports an Afro hairstyle, open dress shirt exposing his chest, disco-style pants, and dark aviator sunglasses. Other male characters in the video are similarly dressed, while the only female (the damsel in distress) wears a natural short hairstyle, large hoop earrings, a headscarf, and tight pants, reminiscent of blaxploitation icon Pam Grier. Multiple camera angles in the video are reminiscent of the \u201cbullet time\u201d visual effect in The Matrix<\/em>, and near the end of the video, Makmende ties a red necktie around his head, drawing parallels to Japanese samurai and cult vigilante Rambo.<\/p>\n

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As technological innovators, young, urban Kenyans seized the moment to reappropriate outdated stereotypes of weakness into aspirations of strength as they projected Kenya into a global online conversation. Through this meme, Makmende became more than a fictional superhero; he represented Kenya\u2019s present and future. While some have considered Makmende as an example of a transnational cultural flow originating in the Global South, this meme, in its cultural and social context, can also be attributed to how and why Kenyans used Makmende to represent themselves. While many video memes are rooted in imitation and parody, the participatory playfulness surrounding Makmende created a \u201cmeme of aspiration\u201d through which certain Kenyans collectively reimagined a hypermasculine hero who could lead the nation toward political and economic stability at home and cultural and technological prominence abroad.<\/p>\n

Read more in \u201cMakmende Amerudi: Kenya\u2019s collective reimagining as a meme of aspiration\u201d by Brian Ekdale and Melissa Tully (Critical studies in media communication<\/em> 31\/4 [2014], 283\u2013298).<\/p>\n

Watch Makmende in action in the video for Just a Band\u2019s Ha-he<\/em> below.<\/p>\n

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