You know… Country Music is not just played in one area; it's actually pretty amazing the following that we have. You are going to be shocked when you hear how far it has been heard and celebrated…

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Sir Elvis, dressed in a yellow and black plaid shirt, jeans, boots and a black cowboy hat, tuned his guitar under the wooden roof and neon beer advertisements of the Reminisce Bar and Restaurant. With a signal to the band, he began singing the Don Williams country hit “It Must Be Love” in a purring baritone. Patrons got up to dance, rocking back and forth.

This would not be an unusual sight for Nashville or just about any country tavern in the United States. Except this was not East Texas, but Nairobi in East Africa, where American country music has a surprisingly robust, and growing, following.

“I grew up with it, and my parents loved country,” said Elvis Otieno, 37, who has become perhaps the best-known Kenyan country performer. Sir Elvis, as he is known onstage, was born the year Elvis Presley died, and was named after him by parents who were big fans of the King.

Kenyans are not immune to the global juggernaut of American popular music and listen to plenty of its genres: pop, hip-hop and rhythm and blues among them. But it is country music that has a strong hold. Country songs are regularly played on the radio. The Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation has a weekly radio show, “Sundowner,” that often features country, while a private television station, 3 Stones, broadcasts a program called “Strings of Country.” Reminisce and the Galileo Lounge here have weekly gigs, and the first country music fair in Kenya, the Boots and Hats Country Festival, took place in March.

Increasingly, Kenyan country singers are writing their own music about love and longing, in an American twang. A Dolly Parton-loving singer named Esther Konkara has recorded her own songs, which are played on local radio stations. Sir Elvis said he was planning a gospel album, and Carlos Piba, 25, another local artist, said he hoped to record country one day in Swahili, the national language.

The ultimate hope for these performers, no matter how improbable, would be to sing with their heroes. “If I could share a stage with Charley Pride or Don Williams or Garth Brooks,” Sir Elvis said, “it would be a dream come true.”

American country music has found audiences around the world, introduced by American soldiers to Japan, Korea, Thailand and Germany, and through Hollywood movies. Particularly devoted fan bases have grown in unexpected places like Australia, Jamaica and South Africa. Aaron Fox, a professor of ethnomusicology at Columbia University, theorized that country music caught on in urbanizing places, where it was embraced as a nostalgic counter to the loss of traditional values.

In Kenya, country music’s popularity dates to the 1940s and crosses classes, but is especially pronounced in the central highlands, the country’s farm belt. Many of the fans are over 50, but a younger generation who grew up listening to their parents’ music also tune in.

Who Would Of knew That Country Music Had Such A Large Following?

If you are not impressed or at least wow-ed by the possibilities of Country Music then I do not know what to tell you….

This is pretty incredible – What Do You Think?

This Article Was Adapted From: The New York Times

Photo Source: Will Swanson The New York Times