The outcome of elections in Kenya are also in dispute. And the streets there have NOT been so peaceful. The Kenyan government says nearly 500 people have been killed in the violence following the announcement that President Mwai Kibaki won re-election last month. Kibaki and his opponent Raila Odinga are reportedly close to holding talks aimed at national reconciliation. Some Kenyan musicians think they may have a role to play as well. The World's Marco Werman tells us about one of them.

Last Friday, Kenyan musician Juma Abdalla and his group the Tutu Band, had a gig at a hotel in Nairobi. 28 year-old Adbala says he knew the band couldn't just get up on stage and pretend that nothing was happening in their country.

“I felt like we should play at least one patriotic song, and it goes like this..."Kenya, Kenya, SINGS." This is a patriotic song, and all of us know this song. But I realized that Kenyans we've not been teaching ourselves about patriotism. All these songs, we don't know the people who composed these songs. But they're proving to be very important at times like this. So when we played that song, actually it was the first song and we played it as an instrumental, all the people from all the ethnic divide that were there at that hotel, everyone sang the song because it was talking about Kenya.”

When Juma Abdalla talks about patriotic songs, he's not just talking about anthems. He also means songs that ask people simply to think...about nationhood and togetherness and peace. He already has a couple of such tunes that he wrote last year.

Undugu is one of them. The title means brotherhood. It's the big hit on the Tutu Band's most recent CD. Juma Abdalla is comfortable preaching brotherhood. It starts at home, with the lineup of his own Tutu Band.

“Me with my keyboard player, we come from Mombasa, from the coast. My percussionist, who I think is one of the best in Kenya, he comes from central Kenya. He's actually a Kikuyu. My drummer, he comes from western. My bass player, he comes from Nyanza. And all these things that have been happening, we've been sitting together talking, we've been worried about what's been going on. We've been thinking that we're even more clever than our politicians, because we do not fight...at all. We sing together, we play together, we make music together. It's actually the politicians who want to.”

Juma Abdalla says he and other musicians have also blamed the Kenyan media. Radio and television had been ignoring the kind of songs with messages that he calls patriotic, in favor of...

“Songs that talk about drinking, the way people had fun last week when they got drunk at a certain restaurant. Because these are the songs that are being given a lot of airplay. So you see, people have now come back to patriotic songs, patriotic music. This should be played so that it is implanted.”

In a few days, there has been some change in what radio in Kenya plays. Juma Abdalla wrote this tune before the election ignited the violence of the past ten days.

It's called Alongozi.

It calls for leaders in Kenya to stop resorting to tribalism. More than anyone else, Abdalla sees Kenya's current troubles as being the work of Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga.

“We are all fighting because of those two people. Those two people. And it's only 2 tribes, and we are 42 tribes. So what they are doing is not fair to us. To all Kenyans. They should be strong enough to show us that they are leaders. And make sure that they dialogue and put an end to whatever is going on right now in Kenya. Which is very bad.”

For The World, I'm Marco Werman.