Affliction and Frightened Laughter in the Song “Covid†by a Kenyan Gusii musician, Henry Sagero

Laughter in the face of affliction and looming danger can be an outrageous act bordering on taboo. Indeed, any attempt to make light of a matter as grave as Covid-19, a pandemic that has occasioned endemic fright and a global existential crisis of a magnitude never witnessed before, can only confirm one’s callousness or, at best, be evidence that the concerned party has lost it and is now displaying signs of severe mental distress. Fear, anxiety, distress, panic and terror would be the more typical reaction, some art produced in the aftermath of Covid-19 reveals a tendency towards the comic. A case in point is the song “Covid†by Henry Sagero. The present paper seeks to examine the aesthetic value of humorous representations in life-threatening circumstances with reference to the song titled “Covid†by Henry Sagero of Bonyakoni Kirwanda Band—a popular music artist from Kisii County, Kenya. The focus will be on establishing the link between the artist’s perception of the existing threat, his conception and deployment of humorous images and, ultimately, the audience’s anticipated participation (or reaction thereof) in the ensuing humorous enterprise. With the purposively sampled song, the study pursues a descriptive and analytical approach aimed at revealing how artistic responses and choices within the phenomenon of popular art have not only been influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic but also the extent to which they contribute to collective societal resilience and survival. Theoretically, the study is grounded in semiotic and psychoanalytic tenets that enable us to view meaningful existence.