Endless Thread - MEMES, Part 10: Makmende

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

We know that there have been meme wars in America, and that Donald Trump has been called the “first president meme’d into office.” But in Kenya—a country where one of the only feasible forms of political expression is memes, and meme creators are being jailed for criticizing the government, it is a very different story. Western media told countless stories about the viral music video character known as “Makmende.” They called Makmende “The Kenyan Chuck Norris,” or a sound-alike of the famous Norris line, “Make my day.” But, according to the artists who brought Makmende into being, none of these characterizations are accurate. We explore American myopia, the peril of memes and artistic expression in Kenya, and how we should think of memes as a powerful form of communication.

Support for endless thread comes from Mathworks, creator of MATLAB and Simuling Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. Amory, get on the tour bus. Time to go on tour together. On tour, green M&Ms, showering in strange places, flouching, you know flouching, Ben? Dr. Flouchy? That was good. I guess I just learned what flouching is.

Floor couch. Yeah, I think we should go on a tour of all the bands that we've loved before, aka all the bands that we've played in. Ooh, okay. You want to go first or you want me to? No, you go first. Go ahead. Well, I've mostly been a solo artist.

I did sing with some friends in elementary school, and we'd like bang hairbrushes together as our percussion. But I made an embarrassing demo when I was 11 featuring a song called Sink. And if it doesn't work out, I know I wasn't meant to be young. And then I made another demo in high school that had some pretty angsty teen vibes. And then I've just been releasing albums since college that have hopefully helped me kind of settle into the person I am now. Unto you, Benjo. Tell me of your bands. So freshman year of high school, the extremely poorly named, but still, you know, nostalgically lovely to me, artificially flavored.

In college, I got a smidge better on the naming thing, three bands later, three, four bands later, megalomaniac. Oh, that is good. Then I was in a band called The Cuts, and then a band called The Ringers, clearly my strokes era. And then I was in a band called Conversion Party, which I thought was pretty good as a band. But don't Google that. Then we broke up. been reformed as the band pre-war. And finally, the last band I was in in New York City, High Pony. What do you think? Is High Pony the pinnacle of my band names? I like it. It's the

highest of the ponies. I'm a fan. That's right. Why did we do this, though? I think that what I wanted to talk about is how, you know, effectively you and I and everyone else who writes and plays original music over the years, is effectively trying to do the same thing, right? They're trying to catch attention and basically go viral. Step one, go viral. Step two, quit the day job. Support yourself with your art. Step three, profit. Stack that paper. And while luck favors the hardworking, long working musician in the end, it's often just dumb luck. Whether or not you get noticed might not have to do with how good you are. Well, back in 2010, a group called Just a Band got some of that dumb luck.

But they were also undeniably good. Yes, key difference between their bands and all of my bands and maybe a couple of your bands. This is Just a Band's song, Ha Ha'ha. And when they put it out, they had had a little bit of attention where they're from in Kenya. They had this good mix of jazz and funk and house music, and they had made it. made some good music videos that were almost referential to the work of the band Gorillas and got some attention. But this song put them over the top. And the song is good, right?

I love it. It's great. And it deserved the attention it got. Yeah, but it didn't just get noticed for the song. It got attention for the video. Specifically, the video's main character. It follows this lanky hero along a knuckle-busting, gangster beating, lady-impressing, adventure that ends up

with a boss fight. And this main character who's been putting a bunch of bad dudes in their place throughout the video, right before he fights the big boss ties a red necktie around his head like a bandana and puts a super tough look on his mouth before punching out the big

boss and walking into the sunset. Even if you haven't seen this video, you've probably seen one like it. It might remind you of the video for sabotaged by the Beasty Boys, a hero delivering justice no holds barred. It's well done, but it feels familiar too. And yet, the main character in this one freeze frame moment where he's tying a red neck tie around his head with the tough guy scowl on his face would be the band's ticket to a wild

ride that would make just a band much more. So we just kind of sat there for an hour, just like wondering what the hell was going on. It would make them creators of a million. that some people would call the first and biggest meme in Kenya, a meme that personified a tough guy identity in a country where memes are becoming a flashpoint for political strife. A meme with a name that in some ways created its own mystery, with its own mythology, a name that has arguably had an impact on national identity. MacMendeng.

I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Sieverts. And you're listening to Endless Thread. We're coming to you from WBUR. Boston's NPR station. So, as we said, back in 2010, Just a Band was pretty much that. Here's band member Mbithi Masia. Yeah, so Justa Band is, I guess you could call it an art collective

of a few guys who got together in college and picked up a straggler along the way and have been making different forms of arts, exploring different media from the bedrooms and houses for over a decade now. Another member is a guy named Jim Chuchu. I am an artist, and I also work at the Nest Collective, which I'm a founder. And what is the Nest Collective for people who might not know it?

The Nest Collective is a group of Rowdy Kenyans. We, I guess we call ourselves a multidisciplinary collective of artists. Something a lot of Americans, and people from all over don't realize about Kenya is that when it comes to the internet, and more specifically, the mobile internet, Kenyans have arguably leapfrogged a lot of other countries. For a long time, Kenya didn't have wired network infrastructure. So the country's internet users, which, by the way, are more common than in any other country on the African continent, choose to access the web from their phones.

And this high rate of connectivity in Kenya has been a catalyst for a generation of artists and other creative workers. Like the guys in Just a Band, who live in the country's capital, Nairobi, and who say that the way they popped off was definitely the music video for their song, Ha-Hae, and the video's main character, MacMende. So the video opens up with an old-school montage of MacMendez getting ready. You don't really see who he is. You just see him kind of putting on his dog tag chains, his blazer, his shirt, his open shirt. Like two buttons are open.

And then you see. see his glasses and kind of his afro, and then walking across this vast empty field, you're introduced to him for the first time. And the title of the video, which in Swahili is Macmende Amirudi, is MacMende Returns. And the whole idea was just we were playing on. We're making a sequel of something that doesn't exist. Something that doesn't exist, yes, but Jim says that doesn't mean they weren't working from inspiration. We definitely watched Chuck Norris when we were small. And we watched like Jean-Claude Van Damme.

International martial arts sensation with John Claw and Dan. Bloodsport. This kind of golden age, fake gold age. Yeah. Over time when there's this kind of like machismo, pseudo-martial arts hero swaggering around and beating people. and Kenyans did watch a lot of that stuff. Also, black exploitation movies and kung fu movies?

Never teach the Bhutan! Which is a lot of influences. But Mbithi says that mix of things makes the video of Ha'hae and the band's music feel very connected to their national identity. I think what makes it distinctly, Kenyan is the gumbo nature of it. the fact that it's all these different things thrown into one pot.

At the end of the day, what came out wasn't a bunch of influences, but it was just this one thing that Kenyon got. This is that thing that I think also speaks to just kind of the Kenyan cultural way of life, right, which is just that amalgamation of so many different influences. And then somehow the thing that comes out of it at the end of it feels Kenyan. The word MacMende is also Kenyan,

as near as Jim and Mbethi can tell. It's a word that they've been using and hearing since they were kids. And this expression was used to refer to people who, I don't know, I guess the person who was feeling themselves the most on the playground,

you know, the guy who climbed to the highest tree, branch on the tree, and you'd be like, oh, you think you're like you're feeling MacMande. You see yourself, MacMendee. Like, it was more of an expression where I grew up. Jim, do you have a different interpretation? I'd say that I think we live in a society that isn't very good at documenting itself.

So many of the things that are part of our culture don't necessarily have a very clear origin. And this is definitely one of those things. Whatever the origin, Jim says this is. sentiment of the idea, the kind of don't get too big for your britches vibe, is a troubling undertone to McMunday, too, which didn't really occur to him until later. That, I suppose you live in a society where people warn one another about straying too far from the norm, which sounds to me like the opposite of what you want young people to be telling one another, right? It's like, don't climb too high, don't stand too close to the fire,

Don't go outside and find out what that sound is. If that is the origin of Mark Mende, I find that origin story quite troubling. Troubling origin, maybe. But when just a band took a playground expression and gave it a face and a beat, it got very popular, very fast. Jim says the first thing that happened was the band broke a bunch of their own records for views on this video. I think on the first day, we had some pretty good numbers. which were like higher than anything we'd ever had as a band.

But then the next day was more than that, and the next day was more than that. That was just on the YouTube video. When the band looked at a Twitter hashtag for Mechmende, they saw that there were six new tweets using the hashtag per second. It was at that moment. I was like, okay, this is different. Let's wait and see. Let's enjoy the ride.

The guy who played Mechmende in the video also started to realize something, was going on while he was walking around his neighborhood in Nairobi. Maybe three, four days after the video went up, I was walking along the road and there was this car had to cross in front of a car. And as I'm crossing, they just hit the brakes, like almost like an emergency brake, and they started hooting. This is Kevin, aka MacMendee. It's pronounced Kevin Mina. And I usually just call myself an entertainer. I am an actor, singer, DJ, director, and comedian. And sometimes part-time MC. A few days after a car full of people hooted it, Kevin,

he went on an errand with M. Bithi in another part of Nairobi. So Bithi goes in, he leaves me at the reception. I just sit down and, you know, waiting room and whatnot. And then as people are walking in and out, you know, that's when someone sees me like, oh my goodness, is that, yo, it's MacMendez. And then this guy runs into the office. And then I hear commotion. And then he comes back with like five people, and then they all run back in, and now it's a whole, like, storm brewing in there. The place exploded with fans. Kevin found himself taking something like 50 selfies. When he and Mbethy finally escaped back into the car home, a friend called his phone, asking where he was. They were seeing a bunch of people posting online about him making an appearance at some office building.

And I'm like, what? What the hell is going on? That's, I think that's the moment when, we started to realize, okay, so this is getting way bigger than anyone anticipated. Pretty soon, Kevin was doing local media. For the last couple of weeks, there has been an online craze about a character named McMende. Finally, we get to meet the person who he decided to take over, Kevin Miner. We know the pattern by now, right? First, McMenday went viral. Then MacMenday became a meme. Viral and meme both share the emotional reaction and the need to spread. But then it's The memes that are the ones where people feel like they can insert their own experience into.

Maybe you're a viral and then everything after that becomes a meme. Memes can be considered a meme if they go viral and spreads, that it replicates itself through people. People will also be able to modify those videos. The musician, MC, comedian, art collective video director Renaissance men in Just a Band were definitely savvy to online stuff. So they had done some social media promotion around the video. They made fake magazine cover. featuring Kevin's tough guy MacMendez face. But after the video came out, other things started popping up.

If you remember the ridiculous tough guy jokes about Chuck Norris some years back and the resulting memes, you've got an idea of what people started doing with MacMendie. One of the ones that I saw says, McMenday uses Viagra in his eyedrops just to look hard. Just to look hard? Just to look hard. Like, were you guys come, were you create? I know you made the magazine covers,

but was this just other people running with this idea or were you generating any of this content yourself? No, I think after the video is out, we stopped. Very quickly, the story about just a band and their video was secondary to the idea of McMenday. But the actual origins of the phrase were still kind of murky. The more national and international media covered the meme, the more confused the story got.

For instance, Jim says that CNN showed up to his house in Nairobi, which was amazing. But then the story that they put out kind of amplified one side of the story that wasn't necessarily true for us, but then because it's CNN, it became the story, right?

So this idea about make my day and was it Clint Eastwood? This story of where the word came from has been repeated a ton ever since Justaband's video went viral. The idea is that the word McMenday is actually a portmante.

A combination of words from that well-known moment in the Clint Eastwood movie, Sudden Impact, where Eastwood points a massive pistol at a robber and says, Go ahead, make my day. MacMenday sounds a bit like that, but... That isn't true for us, because, like, Clint Eastwood didn't occupy space in the Kenyan memory like that, in Kenyan cultural memory. This is something Jim and Embithy say is just flat out wrong, at least in their understanding of where the word came from. It's a shang word or Swahili slang word that means a hero, with a wink, of course, a hero or a person who deems themselves a hero.

And sure, they were inspired by a bunch of the exported macho-American action movies for the Just a Band video. But Dirty Harry wasn't one of them. When it turned into a meme, though, the true origins and definition of McMenital, Sunday didn't really seem up to Jim and Mbethi and their bandmates. They weren't in control of the story. I guess people said that CNN has to find like an angle for the American audience to kind of plug into a story. So they went through that. Even though it's completely wrong.

Oh, God. That's so sad. Fuck that. Yeah. It was sad. But I guess that's how the world operates, right? We did find one of the CNN journalists who was in control of the story when it went international. His name is David McKenzie. And boy, did this story bring back memories? I had to dig deep, I must say.

But it brings up lots of fun memories from Kenya. David says that he started covering Kenya after a time of civil unrest. And close to the time that fiber optic internet cable had hit the continent. People were more connected and consuming more of CNN's work. And CNN wanted feel-good stories. That was his assignment. And we put to him this issue, that the judge, Just a band guys felt in retrospect that reporting by more international news outlets maybe got it wrong.

Yeah, it's interesting. The filmmakers and the members of Just a Band that we talked to for this episode said that they did not think Make My Day is the origin of the term, but that they also said they didn't actually know the origin of the term. Have you heard any other theories over the years? And what do you think about that development? Hey, I haven't spoken to Justa Band for more than 10 years. I know they were just like a lightning bolt in terms of Kenyan music and creativity. So if they say they haven't heard it, you know, maybe it isn't the case. Certainly at the time that was the feeling. And no, I haven't heard any other theories. All I know that is that...

David also said that it was his Kenyan colleagues at the time who were more into the Clint Eastwood theory. And on the CNN pushing a Western perspective thing... Yeah, look, you know, I'm from South Africa, I've grown up in Africa. That's certainly not something that would really appeal to me as a reporter. That's interesting. And, you know, they have a point with many reports over the years in Africa, but I certainly don't think that's the case here. Even if it's not obvious to the casual observer,

the origin of most memes is discoverable, most of the time because they're based on an image that's searchable on the internet. And while MacMendé, the man, aka Kevin Mina of Just a Band, is an image, the personification of the idea, the phrase's true origin is more complex. This Swahili slang that is both about toughness and maybe a lack of self-awareness, where it came from and what it means to Kenyans is still complicated and maybe important. Important because when a meme gets connected to your identity, be it your identity in a subculture or your national identity,

it can influence how you feel. And it can say a lot about who you are as a person. as a country. For Jim and Ambithi, Justa Bands personification of MacMenday is actually connected to something bigger. Are you pro-meam, anti-meam? How do you guys feel about memes? And maybe I'll start with Mbethi first. You ask a very interesting question right now because just yesterday there was an activist arrested by the government because of making memes. Amory and I didn't really realize the conversation would go from discussing the quote-unquote first meme from Kenya to a pretty complicated discussion about Kenyan aid, global powers using finance as a cudgel, and people getting arrested

for memes. But it did. In Kenya, memes have recently become a flashpoint as a form of political protest. Is there a precedent for this? Like, have people been arrested before for making meme-like content? Not really. there's a new, there's kind of like a weird cybercrimes act that was put into place. It's kind of weird and muddy and blurry in that.

Because I guess Kenyans on the internet are a bit fearless in terms of how we talk to people in power. So I think politicians were trying to put something in place to just kind of control the masses, but I don't know. I think Kenya has a talent for suppressing physical protest. More on memes as protest in Kenya in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless. of whether we're looking at science or not science,

we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's Business Partnership.

team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at wbUR.org slash creative studio. Part of the reason that politics and memes are so intertwined in Kenya is that the country and specifically the city of Nairobi have been extremely online for a while, which means Kenyans have been talking about Kenya and Kenyan politics online for a while. Back in 2007, political violence erupted following national elections in the country. Kenyan bloggers responded to the violence by calling out those committing the violence and taking criticism of the government online. When McMenday blew up several years later, resulting memes used the character to criticize the way Kenya was viewed outside of the country, too.

One meme shows McMenday planting a Kenyan flag on the moon before the Americans show up to plant the American flag. It was aspirational, a story about Kenya by Kenyans. Still, Jim and Ambithi say the problems at home have continued. For us, I think Kenya is an interesting place to situate the story of a hero or a superhero or anything in between. Because we often say that Nairobi is like Gotham City, but it's just that we don't have the spandex guys. But we do have the supervillains and they do strut around the city. and the police can't do anything about them. In fact, a lot of the stuff that happened after the video

was very much about people saying, I wish there was someone like this guy around. And the public seemed to think of Mark Mende as being a good guy, even though we knew we hadn't really positioned him on a moral spectrum. But yeah, Kenya really needs superheroes, man. We are like we are really, really between a rock and a hard place and the IMF. Jim said the IMF, as an international monetary fund, which is very hard to define simply, but it's a collection of 190 countries pooling billions of dollars in order to effectively reduce poverty

and foster more international trade and global financial stability. And when Jim says between Iraq and a hard place and the IMF, he's representing what a lot of people in underdeveloped countries feel. The IMF is controversial because for a lot of countries, it represents an outside influence on their national sovereignty. This extremely powerful lending group headquartered in Washington, D.C., that gets to incentivize certain policies

by offering massive loans to countries that need them. And in Kenya, before we even get to the IMF's influence, we should talk about the rock and the hard place. Say more about the people that are strutting around and the police can't do anything about them. Oh my God, just today, even right now, on Tricia, there's a guy called Babu Oino. who's like a member of Faliaman.

This guy had, I think there's a video. Are we allowed to cuss? Yes. Yes. Okay, cool. There's a video of this guy shooting a DJ in a club, and this man is now paralyzed. And this Babu guy, he went scot-free.

Like, the police weren't able to arrest him because he's a member of Falunananans. And we have so many people like that in our country, and most of them are in government. There is video of this shooting incident all over the internet in Kenya. I've watched the footage, and I don't recommend you watch it. But you can clearly see the man who is shooting the DJ. Eventually, Babu Oweeno was taken into custody by the police,

maybe in part because of the pressure from the virality of the video online. And it's still unclear if justice has been served in the case. At the same time, Jim and Ambithi describe Kenya now is a place where the younger, more techy, and urban Kenyan population is more outspoken than earlier generations. And the government is getting more and more aggressive about squashing dissent. Exhibit A, they say, is the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, passed in 2018 and updated this year, which they and advocacy organizations in Kenya say makes it easier for the authorities to yank you into court

or even jail if, for instance, you criticize the government with a meme, which came up recently when Kenyan started questioning the government's use of $2 billion in funds delivered by the IMF to fight COVID. Interestingly, Kenyan started to say online, you know, stop lending money to Kenya because it's not being used properly. And then that has ballooned into this situation where Kenyans are kind of barging into every IMF virtual meeting or press conference thing and just, you know, flooding the comments with stop loaning Kenya money.

This included a recent case where someone was arrested for using memes to criticize the government's reliance on IMF money. Pretty much the fact that just an activist called Edwin Kiama supposedly made some memes that were targeted at discouraging the IMF. from giving Kenya some loans. And they featured some politicians in them, supposedly. And yeah, he was arrested for that. It's all kind of just, as Jim said, a mess.

Again, speaking from a place of ignorance, the political situation in Kenya is not great. And that the government is often treating citizens in a way that at least from a sort of pro-democracy perspective is bad. And I wonder how memes in general in the country, you know, connect to that reality for everyday life for Kenyans. I'll preface the answer by saying that I don't think there's any country

that can say that their politics is great right now. That four years you guys had with Trump was instructive for the rest of the world. because suddenly the country that told us that democracy was great, suddenly wasn't doing very well with democracy. And so for us, what that means is that impunity has become a little stronger. And I was saying yesterday on Twitter that these means, these humorous tweets that we send out as a populace, most likely the only voice that we have right now.

Our court system is very fragile. Our police are underpaid, and they spend more time trying to raise money from bribes because their pay is ridiculous. Our health sector is a whole mess because the government is refusing to hire doctors, because they don't want to spend money on doctors. and we are in the middle of a pandemic. There's so much about our country that is almost farcically wrong.

And so the memes to me are people like what else do you want people to do, right? They've gone on the street and they've been, you know, kicked and pepper sprayed and, you know, arrested. And now even making means will land you in court and in prison.

so a lot of them are funny but there's something much more serious happening there I think it's also the little power we have left in that we know it actually affects the people in power like our president was just whining a few months ago that he left Twitter because kazen's a mean and it's just like it's interesting that these

these guys are so thin-skinned that we're getting to them on the internet. So, yeah. Doesn't seem great if that's your only option, but I guess like having an option is good? Yeah, it's not great for a citizenship to feel like the only way they can, the only option they have left is to engage in dark humor online. There's nothing rosy about that.

Can it be a tool? Or is it just a pressure release in an increasing? pressurized situation? No, I think it's more than that. For example, this IMF thing, as much as we're saying the guy was arrested for memes, what he was arrested for was expressing a very kind of consolidated public sentiment that got picked up by international media. And then the thin-skinned president decides, I need to threaten these guys.

so they stop talking to the IMF. So it's not that stop putting me in memes. That wouldn't stop us, but it's like stop interrupting the day's business is basically the message his arrest is supposed to send. I think if you look at this from like a kind of glass half full place, then I'd say that it's really amazing that Kenyans can speak directly to the IMF

in a way that the IMF has to take notice, that is unprecedented. But come on, petitions are signed every day by people for the most terrible things and nothing ever happens. But a meme, a bunch of memes gets people arrested. Now we are talking. And I think the Kenya government has a lot to be scared of because the generation behind us are, if they think we are verbose online, they haven't met JNZs who, were literally born with iPads in their faces.

So I think this is a lot more coming. And what will new versions of memes in Kenya from that new generation look like? And what will those memes have to say? Just a band is on hiatus right now. The guys say that's because, in part, they're just pursuing other creative endeavors and growing as separate media artists in their own right. But they say that with the right ingredients,

they wouldn't rule out a reunion. With this kind of sentiment, hard not to anticipate, maybe even hope for, McMenday Amarudi, the return of MacMenday. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. Want early tickets to events, swag, bonus content, my shower songs, or Ben's bathtub tunes? Join our email list. You'll find it at WBUR.org slash endless thread. Also, we want to know what you think is the most underrated meme.

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Mix and sound design by Paul Vicus. thanks to an additional production work from Josh Crane, Frank Hernandez, Kristen Torres, Sophie Codner, and Rachel Carlson. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between digital communities and the shaggy, warm, and comforting trunk of Mr. Snuffelopagus. You just keep topping yourself, Ben. I know. It's getting dangerous.

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