Echoes of Kilele: Summit brings music, talks, and live shows to Westlands

If you’ve passed by The Mall, Westlands, this past week, chances are you noticed a flurry of activity, highlighted by a conspicuous yet mutedly coloured banner marked ‘Kilele Summit’.

This week, Kilele Summit has been a congregation of multidisciplinary musicians—from recording artists and producers to deejays and instrumentalists—sharing rich knowledge through panels, presentations, and workshops.

Between February 24 and February 27, inquiring and forward-thinking minds convened at spaces within The Mall, including The Mist, Santuri Salon, Munyu, and Creatives Garage—all located in the basement—as well as Zahabu on the rooftop, to “explore new approaches, fresh takes, and exciting collaborations” in an attempt to broaden the horizons of the new-age music industry and continue to make room for experimental sounds.

Kilele has additionally reached out and included Studio Can-V, a growing hub for budding deejays, The Rift, and AMP Studios, to conduct talks and live performances.

The program, shared on both their website and a pocket-friendly schedule, has featured workshops and panels running throughout the day, with exciting and sonically diverse sundowners to close each day, allowing attendees to unwind and network.

In the spirit of perpetuating this year’s message, ‘Sound and Solidarity’, the interactive sessions have featured varying topics and conversations relevant to the current and future music landscape, such as the use of AI and ethics, collaborative storytelling, album-making, building a professional entertainment business, the role of talent managers, achieving success as an artist, and much more.

With such thought-provoking and profound discussions taking place, Kilele brought Calotropis Radio on board to broadcast live on two separate streams.

Stream A has been dedicated to segments from the summit and performances, while Stream B airs Calotropis Radio programming. Both streams are distributed across the ICRN and accessible via the Calotropis Radio website.

Kilele’s success is indubitably credited to all the hands on deck, spanning local contributors and international experts, “from Berlin’s Bitwig Studio sessions exploring modular production and generative audio-visual systems, to the skate-culture-inspired ‘Boards to Beats,’ hardware deep-dives with Focusrite, Novation, and ADAM Audio, beginner and advanced Ableton workshops, a producer meet-up, and a special masterclass with Martin ‘Youth’ Glover, with the collective intention to reflect a clear ethos: experimentation over replication, collaboration over hierarchy, and curiosity over convention.”

For first-timers, this was an opportunity to fully immerse themselves in the introspective ideas and nuggets shared by keynote speakers.

For example, the ‘What Does Success Look Like for the Artist in 2026’ panel, which featured exceptional percussionist Kasiva Mutua, music promoter Anyiko Owoko, Studio Can-V founder Jesse Mwenda, and international producer and composer Martin ‘Youth’ Glover, was noted by Jay Muli, an artist-manager and industry contributor, as “the best panel of the series.”

“I looked at the panellists, and they represent the touchpoints that strategically make or break an artistic pursuit,” Muli highlighted, emphasising the growth areas of each facilitator in that particular session.

To wrap up a week of artistic exchange and unconventional learning, Kilele presents two days of performances, February 27 and February 28, dedicated to spotlighting diverse and experimental sonic talents—from homegrown heroes such as maufromnowhere, regional stars including Kampire from Uganda and Sisso and Maiko from Tanzania, to international names like Youth from the UK.

Together, the two evenings serve not only as a celebration but as the culmination of a week dedicated to infrastructure, dialogue, and creative risk, extending an invitation to those who may not have found time to attend the summit but would still like to actively commemorate the week that has been.