Ray Petez y Los Kenya | en

The Kenyan Boys Choir, the only international choir to take part in Barack Obama’s inauguration celebrations in January, has secured a recording deal with Universal in dramatic circumstances. The group was making their way back from Washington DC to Nairobi when they were signed up by Universal Music’s A&R Manager, Tom Lewis, in the transit lounge at Heathrow Airport. Lewis, who considered buying a ticket just to enter the departures lounge before finally gaining special permission from the airport to meet the choir, said: ‘They’ve already taken the US by storm. Their sound is amazing and when I saw them...

F. Kenya was born in the Ghanaian town of Asima in the Eastern Nzema District. Trained as a goldsmith, he started singing in the mid 60’s with the Ahamanos band and later joined Kaikaiku’s No. 1 band before going out his own in the late 70’s. He was one of the first popular singers to sing in his native Nzema language and the energy in his vocals and performances made him very popular in Ghana and neighboring Ivory Coast. .

Saxophonist and educator Robin Kenyatta, whose bright career included service with Sonny Stitt, Dizzy Gillespie and B.B. King, died in his sleep on Tuesday, October 26, 2004, in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he was preparing for a sold-out concert in Lucerne. He was sixty-two years old. Born Robert Prince Haynes on March 6, 1942, in Monk's Corner, South Carolina, Bobby, as he was affectionately called by his family, was the third child of Thomas and Rebecca Haynes. He moved to New York with his family at the age of four. While in high school, at fourteen, he began playing the alto...