“Music is Sweet When Your Praises Are Sung”

This paper interrogates the asymmetry that is inscribed in the patron–client paradigm often used to describe the relationship between artists and consumers of art who, also, promote it in Kenya. It does this by latching onto and inspecting a practice where members of the audience gave cash to musicians while making song requests in the “live band” music performances of Ja-Mnazi Afrika at The Noble Hotel in Eldoret town. The practice is shown to be an exchange of gifts on the basis of which a transactional relationship characterized by mutual dependence and reciprocity between musicians and members of their audience was established and maintained. A consideration of the power relations between musicians and members of their audience as read from the exchange of gifts leads to the argument that patronage was part of the “live band” music performances of Ja-Mnazi Afrika in Eldoret town and was a source of the social meaning of the performance. By participating in it, musicians and members of their audience embodied and enacted power—and thereby constructed a sense of the value of their lives.