Mombasa Roots achieving a great popularity. In 1987 they recorded for Polygram their debut album, "Msa Mombasa", from which hit singles "Disco Chakacha" and "Kata" were taken. As many Kenyan bands, Mombasa Roots mostly played live in great hotels. This gave them some popularity among European and American tourists and foreigners in general, as well as the opportunity to play abroad (most notably in Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Dubai, and Oman). In 1999 they recorded a successful CD, "Lele Mama", that included some tracks from "Msa Mombasa" as well as previously unreleased material. Despite their success, Mombasa Roots experienced much personnel rotation. Most
Mombasa Peninsula, the Indian Subcontinent and China. 16th-century Portuguese voyager Duarte Barbosa claimed, "[Mombasa] is a place of great traffic and has a good harbour in which there are always moored small craft of many kinds and also great ships, both of which are bound from Sofala and others which come from Cambay and Melinde and others which sail to the island of Zanzibar." Vasco da Gama was the first known European to visit Mombasa, receiving a chilly reception in 1498. Two years later, the town was sacked by the Portuguese. In 1502, the sultanate became independent from Kilwa Kisiwani and