Muthoni The Drummer Queen Is Building a Music Business Beyond the Stage

Blankets & Wine, founded in Nairobi in 2008, grew from that proposition. Its development into a festival with regional editions and a UK debut reveals the business behind the experience: programming, audience trust, ticketing, partnerships and considerable operational work.

Making discovery worth paying for

The first edition attracted around 300 people, according to Ndonga’s March 2026 interview with The EastAfrican. She financed it using earnings from employment and performances, expecting income from tickets and a share of bar sales. It lost money. Without sufficient experience running a bar, she struggled to establish whether that part of the operation was profitable.

The lesson was practical: performing and running a festival required different skills. Monthly editions through December 2014 were demanding, but helped establish a recognisable brand and a habit of attendance.

Programming remains central to the proposition. The festival’s published selection process includes watching artists perform before booking them. Alongside the live stage, DJ sets, food vendors and shopping give audiences several reasons to attend. The commercial logic is that trust in the overall experience can encourage people to buy a ticket even when some names on the programme are unfamiliar.

Building the operation behind the atmosphere

The festival’s public offer shows how the business is organised. Its June 2026 ticket structure ranged from KSh3,000 for early buyers to KSh4,000 at the gate. Its partnership programme separately invites lead sponsorship, category and experiential sponsorship, and contributions in kind. These are distinct ways to support an event, although their relative financial contributions are not publicly established.

Delivery also depends on specialist responsibilities. A team presentation identified Justine Mbugua as Head of Festivals, Michelle Njeri leading branding and marketing, and Diane Ywaya managing communications, alongside Ndonga as Founder and Creative Director.

In an interview with IN Nairobi, Ndonga described rebuilding essential infrastructure for each edition, from electricity and vendor payment networks to crowd movement, sanitation and artist hospitality. That work explains why an attractive line-up alone cannot sustain a festival. The audience’s experience depends equally on what happens between performances.

Taking the format into new markets

Expansion has followed different arrangements. Ndonga describes Kampala as a franchise operation and Rwanda as a partnership. The distinction matters: taking a festival elsewhere does not necessarily mean owning and operating every edition directly.

Bradford introduced another approach. The September 2025 UK edition was a free event delivered with Bradford 2025 and supported through the British Council’s UK/Kenya Season. It brought Kenyan and local performers together with food and craft traders, adapting the experience to a cultural partnership rather than reproducing Nairobi’s ticket model.

That relationship has continued through a 2026 professional exchange involving Bradford Culture Company and GoodTimes Africa. For Ndonga, the opportunity is to build lasting routes for artists and producers to work across markets. The next measure of success is whether those relationships support repeat opportunities while preserving the experience that made audiences return in the first place.

Sources :

The EastAfrican, “Muthoni The Drummer Queen: Sometimes you’re not wrong; you’re in the wrong stadium” The EastAfrican

Blankets & Wine, “Frequently Asked Questions” Blankets & Wine

Blankets & Wine, “Partnership & Collaborations” kenya.blanketsandwine.com

IN Nairobi, “All Hail MDQ” IN NAIROBI

Bradford Culture Company, “Blankets & Wine Bradford” Bradford Culture Company

Bradford Culture Company, “Nairobi & Bradford Music Development Programme” Bradford Culture Company