Review: In ‘Showman Residency’, Nyashinski Becomes the Architect of Multiple Performance Forms

In the beginning, before we developed this incessant need to name things, to put everything into tiny boxes, we gathered in our caves. We made a rich tapestry of what we now categorise as art subgenres. The cavemen created performances that merged dance, song, drama, poetry, acrobatics, and anything else they could imagine into something magical. Maybe even religious, as posited by German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, who in his 1935 seminal essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction argues that the cavemen’s artistic endeavours were never exhibitionist but acts of piety, offerings to the gods.

Nyashinski’s Showman Residency is religious. And I baptise it thus only because I’m a modern human too, and I can’t help but name things. Otherwise, there’s no categorising what Nyashinski has created. There’s no naming it. Every appellation you might imagine will not suffice. Call it a musical concert, a theatrical spectacle or a multidisciplinary storytelling, but they would all be wrong words, useless in their familiarity. There’s no putting Showman Residency into a little box. Just like the man behind it.

Nyashinski is a true artist. A virtuoso lyricist. On stage, he is like pii dapii (pot water); cool, calm and collected. Exuding nothing short of greatness. When he holds a microphone, like God, he lets it be, and it is. He is one of the handful of artists who can stretch their arms, gather fleeting moments in time, and immortalise them. But you don’t need me to remind you of something you already know. You believe him when he says, “I’m the best ever / Lose? Never / Can’t complain / Already in the Hall of Fame and I’m still playing / GOAT s**t, I’m forever in my own lane.” You know he means every line of that bar because he exists in a different realm, in a dimension far beyond the reach or comprehension of everyone clamouring for stardom.

But Nyashinski is not a star. He’s something bigger than a star. He’s a poet and a philosopher. He’s the embodiment of how great our culture can be. He’s a man whose footprints on the sands of time the waves would never sweep away. We’ve known this since he first held a mic as the dreadlocked teenage one-third of Kleptomaniax, to the mature griot he is today, with a cropped afro (with sprinkles of grey hair) and the self-possessed aura of a man who has embraced his greatness. For Nyashinski moves with the brazenness of a man who knows he will never die. And he thinks, writes, raps and sings in the same breath.

But if there’s still any lingering doubt over Nyashinski’s greatness, there will not be an inkling left after Showman Residency.

A concert residency is a series of live performances by a musician, band, or entertainer held at a single venue over an extended period, typically consisting of ten or more shows.

The concept has been around for a while, tracing its roots to the mid-20th century in Las Vegas, where entertainers like Liberace, Frank Sinatra, the Rat Pack and Elvis Presley pioneered the model, with Presley alone performing 636 sold-out shows at the Las Vegas Hilton from 1969 to 1976. The format gained renewed prominence in the early 2000s through high-profile engagements, such as Celine Dion’s A New Day at Caesars Palace (2003–2007), which grossed $385 million and set a benchmark for economic viability.

But the Showman Residency, whose pre-show I was privileged to witness on 29 March, is unlike any other concert residency you may have come across. Which is not surprising, considering we know how Nyashinski moves. This is the same artist who created Shin City – already as ambitious as it gets – and said in his 2022 track “Showman”: Nakushow kitu new/ Na nitaneed unitrust just once/ Kitu you can’t compare/ Stage ya mine and theirs.

Directed by the ever-immersive Mugambi Nthiga, Nyashinski blends music, theatre, dance, acrobatics, narrative and visuals into one production. This is a huge shift from what he did four years ago with Shin City. And if Shin City proved Nyashinski could build a world, Showman is him proving he can stage it, refine it and own it, night after night, for five days straight.

The Showman Residency is a seven-part show to be staged across a five-day run between 4 and 12 April 2026, at Carnivore Grounds in Nairobi, where Nyashinski presents a deliberately choreographed, theatre-driven performance series. Each show is tightly rehearsed, limited in audience size, and built as a fusion of music, storytelling, choreography, and visual staging, framed explicitly as “more than a concert” and closer to a full theatrical spectacle. In structural terms, it borrows the residency logic – repeatability, refinement, and immersion – but compresses it into a short, high-intensity run, where the same artistic world is performed, tightened, and perfected across multiple nights.

When I compared Showman Residency with established residencies, the likes of Las Vegas mainstays or curated short-run residencies like Drake’s Apollo shows, I surmised that the Showman sits in a hybrid space. It adopts the repeatable format of global residencies but rejects their scale in favour of controlled, almost boutique theatricality. Where most residencies still prioritise music performance as the core, Showman leans heavily toward drama – structured sequencing, narrative flow, and choreographed transitions – turning songs into scenes rather than setlist entries. This dramatic emphasis achieves two things: it repositions the artist from performer to director, and it shifts audience value from communal hype to aesthetic immersion and meaning-making. In effect, the residency becomes less about witnessing a live act and more about experiencing a constructed narrative world that gains coherence through repetition, a move that aligns it more closely with theatre and performance art than with conventional concert culture.

“Who’s a Showman without an audience?” the narrator, played by the eclectic Mercy Mutisya, poses at the beginning of the show. But I realise we’re not really an audience. We’re worshippers, believers in something mightier than ourselves.

We watch our stories unfold, our stresses and our strife. We laugh at our gaucherie. We cry for our longings, for the dreams, for the greats we’ve lost, whose memories we hold within our hearts, whose faces we see splashed across a screen montage: Papa Shirandula, E-Sir, Baba, Mzee Ojwang, Joe Kadenge, Tom Mboya, Wangari Maathai, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o… We celebrate those still with us, whose memories might soon slip away, as every great thing often does in Kenya.

We manifest our hopes and dreams, sending out our prayers to the universe, to whatever we believe in, to whoever is listening, to God. And Nyashinski, backed by the most powerful choir I’ve ever seen, sings the song “Greener” from his debut album Lucky You. His voice is haunting. The song plays like a quiet thesis on modern longing. The melody is a meditation on dissatisfaction. And an ensemble of performance artists – acrobats, dramatists, dancers, contortionists, choir – occupies the stage, not as Nyashinski’s vixens but as his powerful tentacles, each art form elevating the other, and collectively elevating Nyashinski. It’s the most powerful display of art I’ve ever seen. It’s like sitting at the end of time, watching what becomes of all that could ever be.

And yet when the show ends, I feel like this is only a scratch on the surface of what Nyashinski can do. If only I were immortal as he is, I would wait patiently for the end of time, so I can see what becomes of all that Nyashinski could ever be.

Showman Residency will be staged across a five-day run between 4 and 12 April 2026 at Carnivore Grounds in Nairobi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: All reporting, interviews, and reviews on Sinema Focus are protected under international copyright law and the Kenya Copyright Act, 2001. No part of this publication may be reproduced, rewritten, republished, or redistributed in any form by media outlets without prior written consent. For reprint or syndication inquiries, contact editorial@sinemafocus.com.

©️ 2026 Sinema Focus / African Film Press. All rights reserved.