Afro-Rock: Sweet Sound of Honey Until recently ‘black music’ usually meant Tamla Motown. Now after the breakthrough of Jamaican reggae, comes Afro-rock-a term to describe a whole new vocabulary of young, exciting sounds from Africa. This is the story of just one African country, Kenya, where like the rest of the continent, music is fundamental to living. For the Kenyan bands though, the living isn’t always so easy. The record-buying public is small; Nairobi’s tin-pan-alley is still in a frontier-town situation, and there are still plenty of ‘ cowboys around. The bands are eager to reach an international audience. They are trying to do this by creating a music that makes imaginative use of traditional themes and rhythms, but yet is accessible to the Western ear. They dream of the day when Afro-rock music will be as popular in our discos as American soul.