One East African Musician beats all odds for a global fan base · Global Voices
Njeri Wangari

Not many know her as Mwanaisha Abdalla but Nyota Ndogo (Kiswahili for Small Star), is a household name in East Africa.
She has been collecting fans of her eclectic East African sound for over 4 years now. Her blog on the other hand has been running for 3 years. There is no doubt that the blog has contributed the growth of her online fan base.
An artwork of her Nyota Ndogo's Cover Album – Mpenzi
Born in 1981 in the Kenyan Coastal province of Mombasa, Nyota Ndogo has come from a very humble background. She dropped out of school at a young age and for quite some time, worked as a house help until she was discovered by Andrew Burchell as a talented singer.
Now she has 3 cd's released under her name, CHEREKO, NATOKA MBALI NA WEWE and MPENZI. She has also featured on 3 international compilations WORLD 2003, THE ROUGH GUIDE TO KENYA and OFF THE BEATEN TRACK. She is also holder of two Kenya Kisima Music Awards: Best Taraab Singer 2003 and Best Female Singer 2005.
Her songs which are mostly in Kiswahili with a few in English are sang in the Taarab genre heard mostly in the East African Coast as well as in Kapuka and Genge, music genres heard mainly within the Kenyan mainland.
So how does one with such a background learn to harness the internet to her advantage as a growing Kenyan based Artist? This is the question that comes to mind when you visit her blog.
In it, she shares everything about herself as an artist from a personal perspective as opposed to the edited media stories and information that one will find in the entertainment section of a newspaper or magazine.
From music videos of her songs to lyrics to photos of her performing with fellow artists and fans, one can feel a more intimate connection with Nyota Ndogo through her blog.
Blogging has not been an easy experience for her as she confessed in her blog post on 27th July, 2006 at 1.43pm
wow I’d nearly given up with the blog as it was proving difficult to get a new post up .it turned out to be me using an incompatible browser. So am back with good old internet explorer. If this works expect some pix up soon so much has happend.x
Looking at her current blog posts, one can indeed see that Nyota has known quite well how to use the blogging tool. This unfortunately cannot be said of many other East African Artists as I could not find any other artist blog.
It seems, one need not be learned to know how to blog, it is after all, a tool.