From NYTimes. Story by Ismael Kushkush.

In Nairobi, American country music has a surprisingly robust, and growing, following.

“I grew up with it, and my parents loved country,” said Elvis Otieno, 37, who has become perhaps the best-known Kenyan country performer. Sir Elvis, as he is known on stage, was born the year Elvis Presley died, and was named after him by parents who were big fans of the King.

Kenyans are not immune to the global juggernaut of American popular music and listen to plenty of its genres: pop, hip hop, and rhythm and blues among them. But it is country music that has a strong hold.

Country songs are regularly played on the radio. The Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation has a weekly radio show, “Sundowner,” that often features country, while a private TV stattion, 3 Stones, broadcasts a program called “Strings of Country.”

Reminisce and the Galileo Lounge here have weekly gigs, and the first country music fair in Kenya, the Boots and Hats Country Festival, took place in March.

Increasingly, Kenyan country singers are writing their own music about love and longing, in an American twang. A Dolly Parton-loving singer named Esther Konkara has recorded her own songs, which are played on local radio stations. Sir Elvis said he was planning a gospel album, and Carlos Piba, 25, another local artist, said he hoped to record country one day in Swahili, the national language.

The ultimate hope for these performers, no matter how improbable, would be to sing with their heroes. “If I could share a stage with Charley Pride or Don Williams or Garth Brooks,” Sir Elvis said, “it would be a dream come true.”

Aaron Fox, a professor of ethnomusicology at Columbia University, theorized that country music caught on in urbanizing places, where it was embraced as a nostalgic counter to the loss of traditional values.

In Kenya, country music’s popularity dates to the 1940s and crosses classes, but is especially pronounced in the central highlands, the country’s farm belt. Many of the fans are over 50, but a younger generation who grew up listening to their parents’ music also tune in.

Country music’s stories of love, family, chivalry, the land, faith, roads and working-class life resonate with many people here, said David Kimotho, a director at 3 Stones TV, which receives up to 180 text messages requesting songs during each show, notably tunes by Kenny Rogers, Ms. Parton and Mr. Williams.

Kenyans, Mr. Kimotho said, “can identify with the stories in the songs.” A type of music called Mugithi, a genre developed in central Kenya and traditionally sung with guitar accompaniment in the Kikuyu language, has a country feel, giving its listeners an affinity for modern American country music.

Read more at NYTimes.