Sarakasi Dancers
Over the past eight years, Sarakasi has built a solid platform for developing East Africa's natural performing talents into a world-class school for the performing arts. From its base at Sarakasi Dome in Nairobi, the trust runs daily training programs for over 50 dancers, covering a range of disciplines that include traditional dance, cabaret, salsa, hip hop, street dance and other contemporary dance forms.

In 2005, our dance training program was rolled out to 15 community centers, schools and children's homes in Nairobi's poorer slums - taking the joyous expression of dance to hundreds of young people in some of the city's most downcast neighborhoods. In 2009, our outreach program expanded to 40 centers in various slums in Nairobi and thus reaching over 2,000 trainees on a weekly basis.

Sarakasi Trust is also on the forefront of providing exchange opportunities with our international partners.
For more information on training, exchanges and performances, please contact the Sarakasi Trust Office situated at the Sarakasi Dome, Ngara area in Nairobi, Kenya or on the contact information provided.

Sarakasi Acrobats
When you walk the slums of Nairobi these days, you'll often come across a troupe of acrobats practicing their pyramids in the small grassy areas that serve as public parks between people's homes. In these places, people no longer write off these artists with the derogatory terms once common to their trade: 'street entertainers', 'dropouts', 'artists of the poor'. Much of this attitude change can be attributed to the success of various acrobatic troupes, whose professional success on the festival circuits of Europe and elsewhere has led to a re-evaluation of the potential of acrobats in modern-day Kenya. As one of Sarakasi's trainers says: 'A lady came up to me in Korogocho the other day and told me she'd told her son, 'If you want to get ahead, you'd better become an acrobat'. I'm sure she wouldn't have said that eight or nine years back!'

Over the past eight years, Sarakasi's training program has become a prominent force in at least 10 of the city's largest informal settlements - including Korogocho, Mathare, Dandora, and East Africa's largest slum, Kibera where our acrobatic trainers provide a program of free weekly training in local orphanages, community halls, public grounds, and five primary schools that have made performing arts a regular fixture on their syllabuses.

According to latest estimates, at least 2,000 young people have either been directly trained or influenced by Sarakasi's trainers since the program began in 2001, including homeless families, unemployed youths, and children working at dumpsites close to the training grounds. Once these youngsters join Sarakasi's formal training programs, they also benefit from open-door 'classes' in practical lifeskills such as reproductive health and income-generating activities. In 2005, Sarakasi began an innovative program with Kenya's Ministry of Gender, Sports and Culture and the Chinese Embassy to send seven promising young acrobats from Nairobi's slums to China for a year-long exchange with the famous China Hebei Wuquaio Acrobatic School. Now back in Nairobi, the teenagers have become full-time 'ambassadors' in Sarakasi's residential programme, passing on their unique knowledge of the Oriental arts to other young Kenyans.

Since several of our acrobatics troupes have trained and performed abroad in countries including Holland, Italy, UK, India, and China.

Please contact us for more information.


Sarakasi Musicians

Mapacha Africa
Utilizing traditional African beats and instruments, Mapacha Africa has brought forth another dimension to popular Kenyan music. The septet traces its beginnings to Western Kenya in 1989 when these seven friends were in primary school. Inspired by the sounds they heard from street musicians in their small Kenyan village, Mapacha Africa has successfully adapted these rhythms into their own mix of contemporary and traditional sound.

One of the most notable elements of Mapacha Africa’s unique style is the use of a curious instrument called an adeudeu. The adeudeu, which really has no western equivalent, can be said to resemble a large boat-shaped harp, and is made from cow skin, wood and shoe strings. As one masters the instrument more and more strings can be added. One observer states that the sound that it produces is “better than the guitar”. It was this instrument, and the sense of community that it brought, that first inspired the founding members of Mapacha Africa. As the members narrate, it was common to see old men sitting and singing at the village square, an adeudeu between each pair of feet, all sharing a pot of traditional liquor.

In March 2008, the group was invited to Holland by Mundial Production to record their second album, Songa Yee with the band New Cool Collective. In May 2008, the group was invited back to Holland to perform at the Mundial Festival.

The group members include: Kassim Munyanya Erima, Donald Witila Mulongo, Shadrack Onyango, Isaac Sidika, John Aziz, Solomon Mwanish Kaiga, and Maurice Mala Otieno.
The group is now looking forward to exposing more listeners worldwide to the adeudeu and traditional Kenyan music.