This paper traces the growth and nature of gospel music in Kenya. It argues that regardless of whether gospel music is defined by structure or content it is a genre that cannot be understood outside the complex matrix of transcultural links between Africa, Europe and America - colonial and contemporary. As an interminably hybrid form, modern gospel music in Kenya appropriates the sonic and lyrical texture of a variety of genres - from European choral performance to American RnB, hip hop and even Congolese soukous. The analysis of lyrical meaning in both 'Ukilya Moko' (2002) and 'Nakuhitaji' (2001) demonstrates that acts of appropriation from Africa's many elsewheres do not undermine local relevance or creativity. Indeed, they account for the generation of new and varied audiences just as much as changes in recording and media practices have led to the constitution of new public spheres in which, ironically, religious faith is sometimes professed on morally unlikely ground. Additionally, these transcultural borrowings are woven into the fibre of local popular idioms and pursuits often blurring the line between the message of a Christian ethos and the rhythms of quotidian secular existence. This interplay between forms is growing into a socio-cultural grammar that dramatizes the extent of the inescapable intermediality that now defines cosmopolitan African life. Modern gospel's capacity for camouflage and boundary-crossing may explain why the production and consumption of this music has been engendered in local youth identity and the growth of hybrid identities. And in tracing the new places where gospel soundtracks are now heard, the taming of sites of commercial enterprise into spaces of sacred worship must not be naively interpreted as comforting signs of a growing spitituality and moral salvation. Indeed, these shifts need to be located within an anatomy of the economy of charismatic faith and its practices of evangelism.
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