NAIROBI, Kenya — Sir Elvis, dressed in a yellow and black plaid shirt, jeans, boots and a black cowboy hat, tuned his guitar under the wooden roof and neon beer advertisements of the Reminisce Bar and Restaurant. With a signal to the band, he began singing the Don Williams country hit “It Must Be Love” in a purring baritone. Patrons got up to dance, rocking back and forth.

This would not be an unusual sight for Nashville or just about any country tavern in the United States. Except this was not East Texas, but Nairobi in East Africa, where 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 onstage, 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 television station, 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.