Throwback Thursday; Curse of the Girl Group

Girl groups are amazing; they bring to your TV screens beautiful people, sultry voices, very interesting outfit choices and more often than not, incredible talent. You really have to love girl groups, but we are not sure that you do.

Look at the world track record of girl groups. Destiny’s Child, made up of Beyonce, Kelly Rowland and a third girl who no one could ever keep up with, was arguably the world’s best Girl Group ever but they did not last forever. Around the same time there was Spice Girls, queens of the 90s, but they too went on an indefinite hiatus at around 1998-2000 . Of the five Spice Girls, two now have children and Posh Spice got married to Beckham immediately after.

Now, you might argue that we are focusing on international girl groups but the same goes for Kenyan girl groups.

Take for example Divas of The Nile, a group that was made up of Mercy Myra, Achieng Abura, Suzanna Owiyo and Princess July. So good were Divas of The Nile that they even performed at the Festival Mundial in Tilburg, the Netherlands in 2002 and 2003, but still they were not safe from the terrible girl group split.
Another interesting, talented girl group was Talma, made up of Talia Oyando and her friends Alma and Yma. They released their debut album, ‘Jambo Rafiki’ in 2001 and won an Emmy that same year. They later split up; the last two were never really heard from again while Talia went on to explore a solo music career. She has also had stints on TV Talia is currently in radio.

This would be a terrible article if we did not mention the ‘ogopalets’ that went by the title Tattuu and were signed to Ogopa Deejays. Tattuu was made up of Debbie Asila, Angela Mwandanda and Angela Ndambuki. They met at Phoenix theatre in 1998 and released their first hit song ‘ Teso’ in 2003. They had other hits like ‘Parapanda’ and ‘Songea’ which also received significant airplay. But Tattuu, like previously mentioned girl groups, could not evade the terrible split. One of the Angela’s left to pursue a pursue a career in law while Debbie pulled a stint at Kiss 100 and at one time worked at the Music Copyright Society of Kenya; in addition to having a daughter with Kiss 100’s Shaffie Weru.

With all the above mentioned girl groups, you can tell a distinct trait, what leads to the breaks. The girl’s split up in efforts to start solo careers, start families or even change careers. While these moves sometimes pay, as in the case of Beyonce’s who has achieved more as a solo artist than she ever did with her girl group, it is a pity that some talent is forever lost. It also makes us question whether current girl bands can evade this curse of the girl group and keep entertaining us with sultry melodies. Case in point, KIU, the girl trio of the Hali Sio Kawaida fame. KIU released their biggest hit, Mwanake, last year. It was big and saw perform at great events, get hosted on local television channels and so on. They are lovely but question is; can they evade the curse of the girl groups? We hope so…