16 January 2015 Last updated at 21:13 ET

By Charlotte Pritchard and Manuel ToledoBBC

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30835778

One of Kenya's best-known bands are on a mission to reclaim the country's
dance floors and create their own national Gangnam Style hit. So they've
taken a traditional dance and made it cool.

Sauti Sol are the hottest band in Kenya right now, so it's surprising that
they've turned to an old dance more common at rural weddings than city
hotspots.

Folk dances and fashionable nightclubs don't usually go hand-in-hand but
Sauti Sol chose the traditional moves of the Lipala for the video of their
hit song Sura Yako - and it's taken off in a big way.

"It's been a while since Kenyans have had a dance," says singer Willis
Chimano. "In my younger years we used to have the helicopter dance and the
cuckoo dance - those moves were there in the clubs and everyone was doing
them."

But as Kenyans became more prosperous and better connected to the
international music scene, they started to copy the moves they saw on
television and the internet, mostly foreign bands.

Sauti Sol felt that got boring though - they had grown up inventing their
own routines and didn't just want to copy other people.
Continue reading the main story
<http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30835778#story_continues_2>
[image: A Richer World]

The world is getting wealthier - we live longer, eat better, are better
educated and fewer people live in extreme poverty.

But with the gap between rich and poor feeling bigger than ever, the BBC is
investigating the winners and losers of this richer world in 2015.

   - A Richer World 2015 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30335136>

"We never had access to those music videos and that's why we came up with
phenomenal dance styles," says band member Bien-Aime Baraza.

Now Sauti Sol are making their own videos and becoming more influential -
they won MTV Europe's Best African Act 2014 - and they believe the time is
ripe for a Kenyan-inspired dance floor revolution.

"What we need to do is take back our dance, take back the streets," says
Baraza.

What was missing was a blend of the traditional with the contemporary. "The
Lipala dance is actually a dance that has been practised by the Luhya tribe
for the longest time ever," says Delvin Mudigi, another member of the band.

And because everyone's familiar with it, it has really taken off, even
spawning tributes on YouTube - like this one
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbq4BKVNWT4> by the staff of a solar panel
company.

So we want to hear from you about which dance dominates the nightclubs in
your country right now.

Please tweet us your own dance videos using the hashtag*#ClubAfricaBBC* or
email them to [log in to unmask]

Listen to the BBC World Service interview with Sauti Sol
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-30841879>

*Subscribe to the *BBC News Magazine's email newsletter
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26567792>* to get articles sent to your
inbox.*




-- 
Ann Marie

"The art of living consists of knowing what to pay attention to,
and what to ignore.  -- Mardy Grothe

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