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The Mapendo album of the Mighty Cavaliers, up to today, has been shrouded in mystery. If you look at the original cover of this very rare Kenyan funk-infused album all you will find are the names of the engineer and the producer, as EMI Kenya omitted the names of the musicians and the songwriters. Digging deeper a rather sinister story of deceit develops whereby Mapendo becomes symbolic for all what was wrong about the Kenyan record industry in the 1970s, and the music industry in Africa as a whole. As this maltreatment of artists proved endemic throughout the continent, although little talked about.
One of the three surviving members of the Mighty Cavaliers, bass player Bonnie Wanda – who started his career in 1971 with Gloria Africana – vividly remembers participating in the recording of the two albums the band made in 1976 and 1977 – Fisherman and Mapendo – and how they, especially on the last album, got short-changed by shrewd record label executives. In the 1960s it was mostly Indian and European record bosses that called the shots and usually gave musicians the chance of a one-off payment for their session time and recorded songs or wait for – hopefully – a generous royalty check. In most cases records didn’t sell more than a thousand copies with an occasional hit selling in the tens of thousands, so musicians were reluctant to register themselves with the Music Copyright Society of Kenya.