The entertainment industry in Kenya has grown significantly, as demographics shift and devolution drives significant economic growth outside the capital city. There are still many challenges, including both big time and small-level corruption, theft, and the many many challenges of offering entertainment as a service.
While it is a large sector with different players, one of the biggest elements of it for adults of certain inclinations is nightclubs, the last refuge of the tired mind at the end of a long day.
There was a time when bars and nightclubs almost automatically included a dancefloor in their designs. The legendary clubs of Nairobi, such as Starlight, were known as much for their discos and bands as for the debauchery within. But the typical nightclub in Nairobi and its metropolis is now mostly sitting space with expensive alcohol and music too loud for any meaningful conversation.
It makes some sense from a simple business standpoint. A bar is essentially a commercial enterprise that primarily sells alcohol, and so any design that maximises your sitting and ordering, seems good. Leases are expensive, labour is expensive, and the cost of simply keeping the doors open when the rest of the economy is struggling is too high.
Clubs are also being increasingly pushed out of residential areas, and rightly so, because there must always be a separation between church and state. A thin line in the sand that creates a third space between where we work, where we live, and where we go to breathe.
But it also doesn’t make sense.
Not everyone who goes to a nightclub goes there to test the limits of their ability to handle liquor, although it works for sales people, brewers, and everyone else if they do.
Some go for company, to hang out with long lost friends, or make new ones, and listen to the musicians and poets pour out their hearts in song. And song requires dance, to be experienced properly. Even churches, and this is on paper still a majority Christian country, seem to understand that better these days.
The dance floor, a clearly demarcated space where revellers can revel, is about human beings being human beings, and not just as sinners with some disposable income, stress, agendas, or all three combined.
When we speak of nightclubs now, the conversations seem to be mostly about operational security, how not to get your drink spiked and end up dead or without your valuables, or both. Or worse.
We speak about the costs, the health risks of a space designed to poison yourself for entertainment, and the general state of the economy that forces adults to seek refuge in such chemistry.
We rarely speak about a good time being had in the same way it used to be. And yet there are now more entertainment joints than ever, despite all the business challenges within. Few of them have anything resembling a dance floor for when your eyes are glazed and the music hits the spot. The number that still have dance floors are so few that despite a boom, you can quickly count them.
There are clearly demarcated economic class spaces though, most ostensibly the VIP areas that both ooze class but also imply that the classes should not mix. There are tables and chairs everywhere, and smartly dressed service people ready to cater to you, especially as your inhibitions lower and the capitalism of it all fades into the background.
And yet, moving the chairs and tables to make a dance floor, it turns out, is frowned upon by all involved. The agenda of the establishment, other than written rules about how to spot wares without a sticker, not to carry firearms, and for some, to indicate with a wrist band if you do not want to be plastered on Instagram the next day, is meant to be obvious.
Yet, the speakers and music systems age quickly, and increasingly, the live DJ or band is missing so patrons can’t offer direct feedback on the choice, timing, and transitions to the mixer of the audio bit of it all. Or, as is clear whenever live bands do the right thing, that the music has hit the spot by the queue of patrons placing large notes at the feet of the lead singer.
The result then, is that while some old entertainment joints remain alive as thriving enterprises, most new ones have a few years shelf life despite the large scale demand for entertainment, and the fact that we are a majority young country.
And to be young, is to dance, before the back pains and skepticism of everything that comes with ageing wins.
*The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of The Kenyan Wall Street