ASENJI MUSIC

From a starter’s perspective, the idea of pursuing a music career in Kenya is enthralling. A foot into the scene however, unfolds the reality of the underlying challenges and misperceptions often overlooked by most. The music Journey of James Asenji, a 21-year-old Kenyan instrumentalist and performing artist started out somewhat seditiously from a notion to rebel other “not-so interesting subjects in school and picking a rather adventurous path in music as a more pleasant and exploratory subject.

The choice proved quite a right one in Booker Academy where Asenji started music in 2011 with a passion for classical music, operatic genre. With gradual growing interest in music, Asenji started to participate more in choir activities in school to hone his singing talent. Asenji like popular Kenyan athlete, Julius Yego, discovered the immense resources on the internet and started watching a lot of music tutorial videos on YouTube.

Still relatively green in his passion and with a knack for exploration on the internet, Asenji stumbled into classical music icons the likes of Andrea Bocelli, Luciano Pavaroti, NdjabuloMadlala of South Africa, DimitriHvrotovsky among other prominent opera singers from whom he drew great inspiration. Cultivating this interest, Asenji found it more appealing to have ability to create music with musical instruments as it gave deeper mastery of the craft plus the attention from the enthusiastic spectator students of the popular BOB (Battle of the Bands) at national funkies that came along with it on the least part at the music festivals. Furthermore, he later became a force to reckon with attaining multiple certificates and medals for instance 1st  Bass singer in Nzoia region 2013 and and 14 consecutively , 3rd position male duet nationals 2012, a leading violinist in 2013 nationals ,best African jazz soloist 2014 just to mention a few.

The journey wasn’t quite smooth all along for Asenji but with rigorous training and dedicated focus to his passion, he remained persistent with voice and the violin as his major specialties through high school. A major highlight of his journey and a breakthrough came about in April 2012 as the Kenya boys choir were recruiting best talents in the country at the National drama festival where he happened to be performing a winning narrative uniquely spiced up vocally at the National drama festivals in kakamega.

Being recruited into the kenya boys choir was a major milestone for him and later giving him a platform for growth through interaction and apprenticeship by Mr Patrick Masambaya and A golden voice Mr Lawrence Barasa (currently a tenor intern at Eugene Opera in Brooklyn Newyork). Pushing on with his quest to get better and hone his skills and mastery of music, Asenji consistently used YouTube as his training facility and has seen immense growth through interaction with like-minded artists in pursuit of breaking boundaries in music and contributing to the craft.

Asenji aspires to have future collaborations with world greats and be in a creative space that allows for growth, pragmatism and contribution to society both locally and globally through his God given talents in music. He believes that passion, discipline and hard work cannot be substituted in any genuine pursuit of success in any given field in life and that for excellence to be attained; one needs to surround themselves with optimistic people and always be ready to learn as no one is never too good to learn, not even from a child. 

Asenji can be contacted for queries or comments via mail;james.mwanje18@gmail.com