Published by Newsweek - March 2013

Green and blue strobe lights cut through a smoke-filled room in the YMCA office building turned music-video recording studio in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi in February. Standing under a Kenyan flag painted on the ceiling, Juliani, possibly Kenya’s most popular hip-hop star, belts out the lyrics to his newest single, “Voters vs. Vultures,” an energizing song that hurls insults at the country’s current political class and urges Kenyans to “vote wisely.”

The music video was released just weeks before Kenya’s highly anticipated March 4 election and was produced to capture frustration with out-of-touch politicians who “didn’t shed blood [but] are the ones who led,” as Juliani sings. The lyrics aren’t just an artistic metaphor. Five years ago, vicious ethnic fighting—stoked by politicians and gangs loyal to them, and made more violent by the brutal response from Kenyan police—over the disputed presidential race left an estimated 1,300 people dead, hundreds of thousands displaced, and four prominent Kenyan leaders facing trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of crimes against humanity.

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Photo by Sarah Elliott for Newsweek