Kenyan singer Chimano, one of the founding members of the award-winning band Sauti Sol, has opened up, about the deeply personal journey that led him to publicly embrace his sexuality, a journey he says began at home, with his mother, long before the world weighed in.

Speaking during a recent interview with the BBC, Chimano revealed that it was his mother who first confronted the reality he had been quietly carrying.

Rather than rejection, he encountered honesty and courage. She challenged him to stop hiding and to live truthfully, a moment he now credits as the beginning of his self-acceptance.

That support at home was mirrored within Sauti Sol, the band that has defined Kenyan pop music for nearly two decades. Chimano says his bandmates stood by him fully, even when being openly gay in Kenya carried professional and personal risks.

Chimano has often described himself as a sensitive child who struggled to fit into rigid ideas of masculinity.

For him music became both his refuge and language. As fame rose so did the pressure to confirm.

Chimano said that for years he lived with the constant calculation of what to reveal and what to withhold, knowing that being openly gay in Kenya could cost him safety, work and peace.

Beyond his sexuality, Chimano has spoken about loneliness, therapy and the emotional toll of constantly performing strength.

He has acknowledged moments of deep anxiety and exhaustion, saying that creativity sometimes came from pain, but healing required rest and boundaries.

Today Chimano speaks less about proving points and more about living honestly. He has said that he no longer feels obligated to explain himself to everyone, instead he is choosing to protect his peace and create his own terms.

His story is not one of perfection or easy triumph, it is one of a Kenyan artist learning, slowly and publicly, that truth can be costly but also silence can be worse.