Kenyan music lovers braved a long, cold and rainy night just to see their favorite musicians perform at the much-anticipated Tomorrow Leaders Festival.
The event which was held at the Kasarani Stadium, Nairobi on Saturday (08.09.19) went on well into the wee hours of Sunday morning.
The much anticipated Tomorrow Leaders Festival was organized by the Grammy Award-winning Reggae family from Jamaica Morgan Heritage and the line up boasted of some of the biggest names in the music industry. These included Ghana’s Stonebwoy, Nigeria’s Yemi Alade, Tanzania’s Diamond Platnumz, Cameroon’s Stanley Enow, Ethiopia’s Rophnan, Hawaii’s J Boog, Jamaica’s Alaine as well as Jemere Morgan.
However, things did not go as planned and there were quite a few mishaps which ruined the overall concert experience. For starters, there was no dome to shield the concert goers from the rain and they had to hide away in the few tents that were available. Poor organization of the event caused a major hiccup whereby the performances did not start until well after 12 am. The biggest disappointment was that Nigerian songstress Yemi Alade and Tanzanian hitmaker Diamond ‘Simba’ Platnumz did not perform.
According to various sources at the event the reason why the performances started late and other artists did not perform was because they had not been paid by the organizers and according to Gramps Morgan, Diamond Platnumz who landed in the 254 early Saturday morning, was sick. Kenyan artists who curtain raised for the international artists were given a short window of time to perform with many of them like rapper Femi One getting a chance to perform only three songs. It got so bad to a point where Cameroonian musician Stanley Enow was booed off the stage with chants of ‘Simba’ erupting from the audience.
Despite these misses, the show was salvaged. Thanks to energetic performances by Ghana’s BET Award-winning musician Stonebwoy, an exhilarating performance by Uganda’s Jose Chameleone, a wonderful performance by Jamaica’s Alaine who belted out tunes like ‘You give me hope’, ‘Nakupenda’ pia alongside Kenya’s Wyre, ‘Wafula’ and ‘Rise in Love’.
World acclaimed Morgan Heritage came through in a major way and took the concert to a whole other level, brothers Gramps, Mojo and Peetah alongside their band thrilled the revelers with tunes like ‘Don’t Haffi Dread’, ‘Tell me how come’ and ‘Pay Attention’. The group called up Jemere Morgan to sing his hit track ‘International Love and perform the perfect duet of his jam ‘Try Jah Love’ alongside his father Gramps Morgan. Hawaiian J Boog famed for his song ‘Let’s Do It Again’ joined the Reggae family on stage for a brief performance.
The Tomorrow Leaders Festival is a one of a kind music festival that was created by Morgan Heritage and has been dubbed as a movement to save a generation.
