Odeley

Extra Golden was formed as Ian Eagleson (Weird War, Golden) from Washington D.C. came to Kenya to do studies for his doctoral thesis on kenyan music.
I have to admit, the music of Extra Golden is not my favourite kind of music. But it was a great and seldom pleasure to see such passionate musicians. Artists that obviously enjoyed the moment of beeing on stage together.

Why is that seldom pleasure?
Non-reflective and inhuman immigrant laws troughout the western countries.
Playing outside of Kenya was much more than hard for Extra Golden. They (and the people who wanted to invite them) managed it for only 2 times until now.

The first struggle was as they were scheduled to play in Chicago some time ago. As the kenyan members arrived at the airport they were immediately arrested. They had valid visa and an invitation for playing the show. But this was apparently not enough for the authorities to believe that they do not want to immigrate to the US.
It was not easy for the organizers to solve this situation. Extra Golden was able to pass and play the show only just after the senator of Illinois made a call and gave the allowance to pass. Guess who that man was?
Mr. Barack Obama! Now you can guess my political orientation and whom I want to have to be the next President of the United States.

Yes, but that was the United States. I am living in the European Union, a much more human community. Dreamer!!!

Friends of mine organised the stop.spot festival this fall and they invited Extra Golden. They actually knew that it will afford some burocracy mayhem. Additionally they had to pay approx. 4000 € for visa and flight tickets (both directions) in advance. That should be enough proof that the artists will fly back and don’t want to stay in Europe.

Kimpaul Onyango, Onyango Wuod Omari, Opiyo Bilongo were arrested again, this time in Spain. And for several days. Again with every kind of official papers one could imagine that would support the fact that these people want to fly home after the show.
Extra Golden even wanted to arrive 2 days earlier to record their new album.

That Extra Golden were able to visit Europe to play a show needed several calls to the Austrian embassy in Spain and a huge amount of deposited money. Why?? They arrived some hours before they started to play!

So are we really better people, just due to the fact that we were born at another place of the world?
We do not allow people from Kenya to visit Europe, but we would argue if we were not allowed to travel to Kenya.
We justify  the fence around Europe with the angst that they all want to have a piece of our cake (a cake that was somehow built on the situation of poor countries). And the past showed, that we do this in a purposly unreflective way, that imprison  people, that do not want to stay, just to tell them that they are not welcome.