The discovery emerged on Saturday at a listening session in Nairobi, where volunteers played old wedding cassettes collected for the Mtaa Wedding Song Index. On six recordings made between 2001 and 2008, they say, they heard the chorus and distinctive rising melody of “Miale ya Nyumbani”, the song Mageni released in 2021 and later performed at her own civil wedding at Nairobi’s City Hall.
The project began as a way to preserve songs remembered by families but rarely written down. Its coordinator, Aitana Leal, said volunteers matched the hit against 14 tapes from Kisumu, including one labelled with the date of a 2003 wedding. “We spent two years asking permission to sing a song our families had carried for decades,” she said.
Mageni’s version became a fixture at Kenyan wedding receptions and has been used in a mobile-phone advertisement and a popular romantic comedy. The index estimates that recordings, licensing and performance fees generated KSh38 million for rights holders; it says the figure is based on public play counts and rates supplied by two local venues, not a formal royalty account.
The oldest tape contains the song’s full chorus, sung by guests with hand drums and a wooden-string instrument. Leal said the family that supplied it had kept a handwritten lyric sheet, dated 2003, in a biscuit tin. The national copyright office has received copies of the recording and sheet and is checking whether the original work was ever registered.
We spent two years asking permission to sing a song our families had carried for decades.
Aitana Leal, coordinator of the Mtaa Wedding Song Index
How the chorus travelled
The project’s public call for wedding recordings went out in April. By August, volunteers had received 73 tapes and memory cards from families in Kisumu, Nairobi and Kakamega. The matching chorus was first flagged by a retired wedding keyboard player, who recognised its opening notes while helping the team digitise a cassette.
Mageni’s label, Mawingu Records, said it acquired the song through a Nairobi producer and had paid for the rights it was offered. “We did not knowingly take a family recording or claim to have sourced this melody in Kisumu,” said Luke J. Bell, the label’s licensing director. He said the company would pause new licensing deals while it reviewed the material.
The revelation has caused particular anger because the same label sent a KSh240,000 invoice to a Kisumu cultural group in 2024 for performing “Miale ya Nyumbani” at a public wedding-song showcase. The group paid after being told the song was controlled by the label, Leal said. Mawingu said it was checking the invoice and would refund the payment if it had been wrongly charged.
Mageni, whose 2021 wedding performance helped make the track a national favourite, said through her publicist that she believed the producer had cleared the composition. She has not cancelled upcoming appearances, but two wedding venues told the index they had removed the song from their recommended playlists while the dispute is reviewed.
The family that supplied the 2003 tape has asked not to be named while relatives discuss what to do next. Leal said the index was seeking a meeting with the label and the copyright office, and would make its recordings available to any formal review. For now, she said, the project’s next step is simple: return the song to the community gathering where it was first heard.
