Makmende: The Origin, Meaning and Hype

Friday, 26 March 2010 18:28

Written by Nova Hinga

It took a combination of factors. The creative thinking of a group of musicians (or their marketers for that matter); Kenyans’ thirst to have a viral thing of their own and the repressed (?) plagiarism nature of the average Nairobian. And a Kenyan long dead sheng word was reborn into a superhero of superheroes; Makmende. The music video being pushed behind all this Makmende hype is however real tight, by our standards.

With a few poetic liberties here and there, Makmende, like the fictional biographies of the members of the ‘boy band’ behind its internet push, has been redressed and reborn completely different from the original, from the mocking reference to a neighborhood wannabe hero to the African superhero of superheroes. Now Kenya has finally gotten to have one of its very own as a subject of the Jack Bauer (and Chuck Norris before him) one liners.

From facebook to twitter and virtually every Kenyan associated website or forum, Makmende has made a not so original but viral ‘return’. Not really a return but more of a rebirth as already intimated above, the origin of Makmende is highly associated with its meaning. When Hollywood came to Kenya and gave us various stunts, stars, heroes and superheroes, around the 90s one particular phrase stood out. A phrase uttered by a character even in the midst of the deadliest of all dangers – ‘make my day’.

Somewhere, lost in translation or just as a victim of very intentional localization, ‘make my day’ became ‘mak-me-nde’ and Makmende was born. The phrase was reference to no hero or superhero however. It was a tag reserved for those neighborhood fellows who thought a bit too much of themselves as the macho males of their localities.

The word, like with a not so few sheng words, soon lost meaning as ‘the world moved on’ and died off. Until Just A Band, in a stroke of marketing genius, that read the Kenyan internet users for that gullible need to not only copy but also have a hero of their own told us ‘Makmende Amerudi’.

As a marketing strategy, it has worked great, for everybody is talking about it and the witty Ha He video, from internet forums to mainstream Kenyan media. The .com, .net and .org domain names for Makmende have all been snatched up in the month of March by various people too, all seeing some opportunities.

We shall not review the song here, but when all is said and done, it is a song that you can listen to and is refreshingly different and light.

When all is said and done, and behind all the hype, remove the second M in the name MakMende and what you get may be what this MAKmENDE hype may be all about.

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Jke, thanks for your comment. It is true. I have researched on it and that is the most credible source for the word.

The expression of plagiarism I refer to in my article is in the shameless copying and pasting of Chuck Norris, Jack Baur (etc) one liners. There are in fact some that show originality and you can say they are pure Kenyan but most are merely the cut and paste brigade at work.

Unfortunately I do not believe that we have drilled that low into the rock bottom that we have found ourselves in as Nairobians for us to settle for an unoriginal identity.

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0 #1 2010-03-29 15:57

Hahaha... fo real? You know I made that "make my day"-phrase up when I commented on Archer's post. So is this confirmed?

Else, what do makende have to do with this?

As for the plagiarism: yes, of course. The Makende story may be a super poa hook for it, but if it takes a super hero and a Twitter meme for Nairobians to cook up their own identity, then so be it.

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