Jimmi Rugami's life spins like a vinyl record on the platter of Africa's most vibrant metropolis.
And if when he was younger, he used to spend his days and above all his nights at the speed of the 45 rpm records he played in the clubs where as a deejay he brought fun to the sound of African music, today at the threshold of sixty, the present is lived at 33 rpm, like the albums he sells in his vinyl shop, a surprisingly unique mecca in the whole of East Africa, and not only.

Jimmy is the ‘real vinyl guru’, that's what he's always been called and followed on social media, and that's what he has named his shop, which is actually three, one in front of the other, so many second-hand records crammed inside, all strictly divided into genres and arranged in alphabetical order.

‘I don't count them anymore,’ Guru Jimmi tells us, ‘there are tens of thousands. All of them like children, because each one contains not just music and songs, not just its origin, but the story of how it came into my hands'.

Jimmi's story is one to be told in a novel in which there are half a century of growth and achievements of free Kenya. And it is he who narrates it, as if gently resting the needle on the grooves of a concept album.

‘After finishing secondary school, in 1980, from my hometown of Thika on the outskirts of Nairobi, I moved to the slopes of Mount Kenya, where my brother had found work. He had a rudimentary record player and a cassette player, and music was played in the house. I was scraping by selling stationery, but I thought it would be nice to trade in records. In Meru, the reference town, there was only one Music Store, and it was nothing special. In the other towns, which were booming, it was nothing.

At the same time, an interesting school of music was growing in Kenya, linked to traditional rhythms and music, rearranged with modern taste, especially for dancing: the Rhumba, the Benga from Lake Victoria, or the Lingala that came from Central Africa. I decided I would open my own record shop.

I went to Nairobi and invested my savings in 45s. Thus began this adventure'.

In a short time, Jimmi became a reference point for the whole region and began to accumulate so many records that the fledgling dance clubs not only in Meru, but in neighbouring Nanyuki and the less neighbouring Isiolo, wanted him to play them.

‘I bought two good turntables, a mixer and a disco system and, before I could afford a car, I used to load everything onto the rickety buses that would take me to my destination. Before long, I was so famous and sought-after that club owners would come and pick me up in their vehicles, just to have me’. Jimmi tells of evenings with African sounds and wild dances late into the night, of beautiful girls for whom he was the star, of life often on the edge where he did a beautiful, if somewhat wearing job.

‘Then came AIDS, the African plague of the century. I already had a family...actually two because I am a polygamist, and children. Nightclub girls were an increasingly dangerous temptation. So I decided to quit deejaying.

It was 1989, by then I had so many vinyls that the shop in Meru was wasted. I decided to move to Nairobi.

At that time, CDs arrived, and many small record shops in the capital decided to convert. I used to go around like a diviner and make low but unreliable offers and buy them all. I felt like a dealer, but at the same time a collector, a devotee'.

The Guru. Jimmi is not satisfied with Nairobi, he starts travelling all over Kenya, he buys a Peugeot giardinetta which is constantly full of records. He travels to Kampala, Uganda, Dar Es Salaam, Zambia, all the way to Zimbabwe and Namibia. He is a ‘vinyl hunter’, and just like hunters, he goes on even dangerous adventures.

‘Once, in Namibia, I am warned that there is a South African couple ready to sell me five thousand vinyls in one go, even rare ones. We meet at the border, like smugglers. What they hadn't told them was that I was a black man from Kenya. For two racist South Africans, unacceptable to sell me even one vinyl. But I had come all that way for that. Finally to dissuade me, the husband pulled out a gun and put it to my temple. The deal couldn't be done. I consoled myself by buying a few hundred in a warehouse in Zimbabwe.

In thirty years, Jimmi has earned not only continental fame (there are only three other vinyl cathedrals in Africa, in Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa) but also international fame, having been listed among the world's most important vinyl shops, even cited by Michael Barnes in the best seller ‘Around the World in 80 Vinyl Stores’. But Jimmi's is an unquenchable passion, almost a good disease.

A contagious passion that he has passed on to two of his family. “I work with a son, Ndegwa, and daughter, Wangui”. But all six children and 12 grandchildren know the value of music, assures Grandpa Jimmi.

‘The last record harvest came with the pandemic,’ he concludes his story, ’many discos unfortunately decided to close forever and called me in despair. They knew I was the only one who could buy all their records in bulk. Some had lived like old ex-combatants, others had arrived naked at the goal, without covers. Thousands more children. Plus during the period of seclusion, people started listening to music at home again and many rediscovered old record players, almost all of them broken.

So I started repairing them, and my son became a very good mechanic. And I started looking for and buying those too, to resell them'.

More and more a guru, so much so that by now his shop, inside the historic Kenyatta Market in the popular area of Mbagathi, is always crowded, especially with foreigners and not only nostalgic, but also very young people. At his place you can find everything, with priority given to the African music he loves most.

‘Blues, African Jazz, Manu Dibango, Hugh Masekela, the Ladysmith Black Mambazo. I love live recordings with big bands, like the Congolese Franco. Today, music is made at home with a computer, how sad, you can correct every mistake, the out-of-tune, but there is no more authenticity, there is no sweat, talent and skill become optional'. The concession to a bit of nostalgia was inevitable, but also natural for an African music historian like him, who now willingly leaves the business side of the job to his children and devotes himself to master classes with students in which he tells the history of vinyl.

‘And I never cease to remind them, and all visitors to my shop, that music, particularly American jazz and blues, was born in Africa and must continue to survive here.’