MEMES, Part 10: Makmende

Endless Thread

WBUR

Reddit, Technology

4.2 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2021

⏱️ 37 minutes

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Summary

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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	WBWR's last scene is back with surprising news stories about people, places, and things
0:07.1	that have gone missing, all told by tenacious public radio storytellers who refuse to
0:12.4	let mysteries go unsolved.
0:14.8	Don't miss season 3, out now.
0:17.2	Follow last scene wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:20.4	Produced by the island at WBWR Boston.
0:34.3	On tour, Green Eminems, showering in strange places, flouching, you know flouching Ben.
0:41.6	Dr. Fauci?
0:42.6	Oh good.
0:44.6	I guess I just learned what flouching is.
0:52.3	I think we should go on a tour of all the bands that we've loved before AKL, the bands
0:56.4	that we've played in.
0:58.0	Oh, okay.
0:59.4	You want to go first or you want me to?
1:02.5	No, you go first.
1:03.7	Go ahead.
1:04.7	Well, I've mostly been a solo artist.
1:06.9	I did sing with some friends in elementary school and we'd like bang hair brushes together
1:11.0	as our percussion, but I made an embarrassing demo when I was 11 featuring a song called
1:16.2	Sink.
1:24.6	And then I made another demo in high school that had some pretty angsty teen vibes.
1:39.6	And then I've just been releasing Album Sense College that have hopefully helped me
	...

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