Ayub Ogada

Job Seda (1956 – 1 February 2019), better known as Ayub Ogada, was a Kenyan singer. He was a singer favoring the nyatiti (an eight-stringed lyre with its origins credited to the Luo, a tribe in Nyanza Kenya) as his characteristic instrument. His music is known to have a natural feel to it, having songs of birds, the calls of animals and the sounds of children playing in the background. Ayub Ogada was also an actor landing major roles in films including the Academy Award-winning Out of Africa (1985) and Kitchen Toto (1987). Biography Ayub Ogada was born in 1956 in Mombasa, Kenya. He is a descendant of the Luo people of Nyanza Kenya and was influenced by their musical heritage by his parents who were musicians. They performed Luo music to Kenyan and US audiences. Ayub’s experience of travelling with his parents to the US and his exposure to both western and African cultures had a profound effect on his music and outlook. While at school in Kenya, Ayub played various instruments in bands and embraced both traditional and modern music. In 1979, after leaving school, he co-founded the African Heritage Band, fusing traditional music with the sounds of rock and soul that Ogada and his bandmates heard regularly on the radio.