Robert Kalumba
11 October 2008
The emcee of the night, Elizabeth Pamela Acaye went through the night's star performer's achievements. "She performed at Nelson Mandela birthdays twice and she was the only female African performer at the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize concert.
The emcee was not done, "She comes from the land that gave you Barack Obama." By the time Suzanna Owiyo stepped on stage, we knew that in our midst was one of the best in the business.
Emin Pasha Hotel was the venue of last Sunday's Zamani Concert, and the organisers were not to be deterred by the threats of a downpour. They went ahead to create a cozy ambience. With gorgeous female ushers dressed in light yellow African outfits, they offered green plastic mats to concert attendees to sit on. And the stage was set for a unique night.
The curtain raiser of the night was the 25-year-old Ugandan World Music artiste Tshilla who kicked off her performance with the Lugisu song Naabone taken off her 2007 album Sipping from the Nile.
Perched on a high stool, with a guitar in her hands, Tshilla had a jerky start to her performance, which one would owe to nervousness, but when she got her groove back, the music was thrilling.
Tshilla sings a fusion of African contemporary music and western funk. And if few of the revellers who attended the concert didn't know her before, curtain raising for Owiyo endeared her to a new set of fans. But the night didn't belong to Tshilla, it was singer-songwriter Owiyo's.
With cropped hair, dressed in cream pants and a cream top, the 2002 Kora Award nominee stepped onto the stage to perform for the already hyper crowd.
"I'm happy to be here tonight," she said, and she kicked off her performance with Marcela I Miss You, a song dedicated to her late grand mother. Owiyo, who was accompanied by instrumentalists from Kenya, engaged the crowd with her high energy performances.
On songs like Janoyu, she gave instructions; "Kick your legs right, left and clap," to which the excited crowd obliged. It was a sight seeing our white brothers following the instructions and hilariously chaotic!
But it was Kisumu 100, a song which was the launch pad of her music career, which got the crowd going. Kisumu happens to be the birth place of Owiyo, and in Kisumu 100, she bigs-up her home town, from the delicious fish from the lake, to the boda bodas in the area. Everything about Kisumu according to her is "sawa".
The performance had a noble cause and the chairperson of Uganda Women's Cancer Support Organisation (Uwocaso), Ms Speciosa Kabwegyere delivered a brief speech about the plight of women with breast cancer as the concert was held to raise awareness about breast cancer.
And it was in order for the star of the night to end her performance with a rendition of the famous Malaika song, as a dedication to the breast cancer awareness. Despite the small crowd which one of the organisers of the show David Damba attributed to the earlier downpour, Suzanna Owiyo left the stage with her music credentials enhanced, and for those looking for something different, Zamani did not short change them.
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