House Music in Kenya first gained popularity in 2004 with 6AM Entertainment being among the first to introduce the sound to Kenyans. It’s listenership has since grown steadily over the years.

House Music partly traces its origins to Chicago in the early 1980s and the disco music movement that ruled dance floors in the 1970s. As disco faded into memory, this new genre was born out of DJs – like Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy–who started to playing and producing music for the dance floor with melody and harmony born purely out of electronic sounds such as synthesizers and drum machines. Parallel to the Chicago movement, House also started to define and establish itself in the United Kingdom, creating a foundation for electronic music that still has a strong presence there.

A new breed of house music is now taking root in Kenya. African House, popularly referred to as Afro House, is rich in it’s application of African Drums, Percussions and Strings and is billed to be Kenya’s next big sound, having already taken root in Southern Africa and receiving a lot of recognition from the rest of the world.

“What attracted me to Afro House was how it blends certain African Elements with the internationally renowned House beats to create sounds that captivate the listener” says Jack Rooster, a Kenyan Producer/DJ and self-proclaimed Afro House Ambassador to Kenya.

“We now need more local Artists/Producers to blend our unique Kenyan style of music with House, guaranteeing it’s international marketability.It has worked in South Africa, it will work here too” he added.

Jack Rooster will be representing Kenya in Malawi at this year’s edition of the award-winning Lake Of Stars Festival alongside such acts as Freshly Ground (South Africa) and Kenya’s very own Dan “Chizi” Aceda.

Locally, Jack Rooster will be performing at the biggest synchronized party in the World, EarthDance, set to take place on the 3rd of September 2011.