By Joseph Ssemutoke
Henry Musoke, a 47-year-old medical doctor who became a teenager and starred in his school’s MDD activities in the early-to-mid 1980s, perfectly remembers the music that Ugandans listened to in those days(when he dreamt of possibly of taking up music as a professionand consequently paid almost as much attention to the music trends in the country as he did to his books).
“It was primarily the Congolese who dominated the scene,” Musoke recalls. “People mostly played their music either off cassette tapes or listened in to the music slots on the national broadcaster Radio Uganda, but egenerally it was Congolese music everywhere, with a little sprinkling of western music for the few educated elites.Ugandan music was scarce then, especially when it came to recorded music. Cassette tapes of Ugandan music were very rare, and video tapes even more scarce, so most people caught Ugandan music only at live performances by the bands that were available.”
Veteran musician Daniel Kazibwe alias Ragga Dee agrees with Dr. Mutebi, saying:“Congolese sounds were the staple diet of Ugandans when it came to music. The Congolese had conquered the market so much that the visiting international artistes we received were almost exclusively Congolese, the likes of Kanda Bongo man, Tshala Mwana, Tabu Ley and their other contemporaries.”
While the seasoned arts journalist and critic Moses Serugo gives a wider shot of how the situation had got to be what it was by 1986, saying that the performing arts scene in the country had as an industry suffered greatly owing to the political instability that had befallen the country in the two and a half decades since independence. He says because the successive regimes had aimed to silence the critical voices that came from artistes, the arts had been denied the space to freely develop and progress, this applying to music, theatre arts, film, among others. He cites such cases as the disappearance of dramatists Byron Kawadwa and KalundiSserumagga during President Idi Amin Dada’s reign.
Peace and stability brought by NRM have provided a conducive environment for arts to prosper
Ragga Dee reckons that the foremost contribution of the NRM regime to the progress of the arts in the country was in ushering in peace and stability under which the arts could prosper.
“There were always good artistes in Uganda prior to 1986, the likes of Elly Wamala, Fred masagazi, EclasKawalya, and Philly Lutaaya. But the instability and insecurity that reigned didn’t allow them to relaize their full potential,”Ragga Dee says. success was always limited in terms of airplay, studio production, among others.been widely reckoned that one of the major obstacles to the development of Uganda’s music industry prior to the coming to power of the NRM regime was the instability and insecurity that had characterized the country since independence. And a dive into the history pages might perhaps justify this view.
“There were always good Ugandan musicians through the 1960s, 1970s and early-to-mid 1980s, such as Elly Wamala, Fred masagazi, EclasKawalya, and Philly Lutaaya. But their success was always limited in terms of airplay, studio production, among others.Without peace and stability music talent or any other kind of talent can’t really be productive and achieve its full potential,” Ragga Dee says. “So while it can’t be claimed that it’s the NRM regime that introduced or created talent in Ugandan music, the peace the NRM government brought enabled the talented musicians and other talented artistes to have a conducive environment in which to nurture and breed their talents to attain the productivity that hadn’t been enjoyed in the foregoing years of instability.”
Music analyst Joseph Batte agrees, reckoning that with the peace and stability that the NRM brought, artistes came to have the conducive atmosphere to think, create, record, network… and their fans were settled enough to follow and support the artistes and their creative work.He says this is why, for example, when the NRM came to power, already existing talents like Elly Wamala and Jimmy katumba became more productive and enjoyed more success , with Jimmy katumba and his Ebonies reaching their peak in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Afrigo band hitting new heights as now it came to regularly hold weekly shows under a peaceful arrangement for decades, among other things.
End of Congolese music dominance
While it has been asserted that Congolese music began to lose its dominance of the Ugandan scene in the early to mid 1990s as Jamaican sounds came in and conquered a wide fan base, popular music promoter and disc-spinner DJ Erycom (Mayanja Eric) reckons that the breaking of the Congolese dominance of the Uganda music scene particularly occurred when the distinctively Ugandan urban sound/genre that has been popularly dubbed “Kidandaali”/Ügandan Afro-beat”emerged at the tail end of the previous millennium.
DJ Erycom says it was the emergence of such musicians as Red Banton, Chameleone, Bebe Cool and Bobi wine, with their fusion of native Ugandan sounds and styles with American/Jamaican music traditions, that summarily dismissed Congolese music from the forefront of the Ugandan music scene. He says this was a critical step in the development and progress of the Ugandan music industry, because now the country came to have a distinctive sound that it could claim as its own and both the artistes and fans could now enjoy music that they more closely connected with be it in content, instrumentation, style, name it.
The journey to the ultimate ending of Congolese and other foreign cultures’ dominance of the Ugandan music scene, however, has been widely attributed to more than just the crop of artistes DJ Erycom highlights, with many analysts and researchers reckoning all Ugandan artistes who practiced between the1990s and mid 2000s need to be credited because jointly as an industry they exerted themselves creating distinctly Ugandan productions that veered away from the footsteps of the Congolese, south African and Jamaican artistes that Ugandans had for long imitated to religious degrees.
On the side of film Moses Serugo says that although Western and other foreign productions are still dominant and might never be entirely ushed away, it is nonetheless commendable that the Ugandan film sector has arisen over the last decade or so, with an ever increasing number of productions that come with an ever-improving quality of workmanship.
There has been creation of authentic/distinctive Ugandan arts styles and brands
Along with (or it might be said that ‘as the path toward’) the ending of Congolese and other foreign sounds’ dominance of the Ugandan music scene, distinctively Ugandan sounds/music genres have emerged over the last couple of decades. These include such genres as the aforesaid “Kidandaali”, “Ugandan Afro-beat”, “Ugandan band music”, and Ugandan native hip-hop styles such as “Lugaflow”, “Kitaraflow”, “Luoflow”, among others. Not to forget the Kadongokamu genre that precedes Uganda’s independence, yet which (according to DJ Erycom) has over the last couple of decades been further developed and polished so that it is now a finer, distinctively Ugandan sound.
Joseph Batte stresses the importance of having our own native/indigenous/homebred genres of music as a country, by reckoning that no country can claim to have made any progress in any arts genres before it develops its own distinctive styles and genres that capture its culture at a given moment in time.
Music and other performing arts now paying better
Reminiscing of how the performing arts were not generally considered a respectable profession back in the mid 1980s when he joined the Ugandan performing industry as a young boy, even how the performing arts didn’t really pay enough for their practitioners tomake decent livings; Ragga Dee says it’s remarkable that over the last few decades the performing arts have been transformed into a sector whose practitioners are respectable, well-renumerated professionals that the whole country looks up to.
“Back then parents didn’t even want their children to take up careers in music or drama, if a child opted for such a path they would be considered to have chosen to be failures in life,” Ragga Dee says. “But look at us today, everyone wants to become a musician or an actor or actress, because it is well-paying, it’s more than respected, it makes one a star if one performs exceptionally well… And critically, the NRM regime has supported this progress, by giving artistes not only the freedom and space to create but also by supporting them through such programmes as MDD lessons in schools, hiring performers for events, which is giving them jobs, among other things.”
