Joachim Buwembo
3 July 2009
column
News of the death of pop star Michael Jackson found me in his country on a working tour. Interestingly though, I first got the news from Kampala, such is the era of information technology. This being summer, the sunlight sipping through the window curtains of my hotel in Washington DC woke me up at 4a.m. Lazily, I reached for the laptop and thanks to wireless Internet, it went straight to my address when I switched on."Nga Kitalo ..." was the first line under 'subject' of the mail from my daughter in Kampala. I quickly opened the mail and saw it was about MJ.
There were several other messages from Kampala people of different ages talking about the same event. I switched on the TV and yes, talk about the demise of MJ was on all the channels.
Now the only two things my daughter and I agree on about music are that MJ is great and that Sylver Kyagulanyi is one Ugandan who knows his stuff.
Considering that she has had only one president while I have been ruled by eight, that is a lot of common ground to agree on. Otherwise when I rush to pay 100k when Masekela or Soweto String Quartet come to town, her drops at what she considers exorbitant, just like mine drops when she asks for the same amount to see some fellow called Akon.
But while the Ugandans found MJ great, our country is not a music desert either. It is just the market and limited capacity to disseminate it that make our stars look smaller than the American ones. There are Ugandans who have excelled in their music genres that may not be of mass consumption like pop. These are the likes of Elly Wamala (RIP) and Isaiah Katumwa. But we have also had serious creators of pop whose work has touched the hearts of many in our part of the world.
My daughter - I keep referring to her because she is one of the 15 million one-president Ugandans I know, certainly does not have a clue who Godie Mwambala was. However, she knows the song 'Jim'. The late Mwambala composed many of the hits done by the great Afrigo Band including 'Jim'. She has also not heard of the late Tony Sengo. While Tony also spent a long time with Afrigo, he went ahead to discover and train many young talented Ugandans. People like Tabel Tendo, better known as Titi, were first shown how to hold a microphone by Sengo. Our 15 million one-president Ugandans do not know about their fellow countryman Sammy Kasule, the man who shook the Nairobi music scene in the eighties with enduring numbers like Shauri Yako, Kipenzi and Ndoto.
But one of the greatest musical brains that our 15 million one-presidency Ugandans never got to know was Peter Clever Lwanga, who passed away in 1994.
Because of poor record keeping and legacy preservation, Lwanga's name will not ring a bell in many a Ugandan mind. It was Lwanga who composed most of the songs by the Ebonies which made Jimmy Katumba and Stella Nanteza famous in their day.
Peter Lwanga composed all his music when Uganda was going through the nastiest phases of its history- the last days of Idi Amin and the subsequent years of unstable governments and high insecurity. Just like some music is born on battlefields, the bad days did not stop Lwanga from creating some of the sweetest melodies and powerful lyrics ever to come out this land.
The bespectacled Lwanga hardly recorded any songs under his name himself.
Which brings us to today's composer, Sylver Kyagulanyi, who has some similarities with Peter Clever Lwanga. I have never met Kyagulanyi myself but the fact that I am one of those people who consume Olunaku Luno for breakfast, shows how effective his compositions can be. For several months now, I take my daily dose of Olunaku Luno while going through the paces of coordinating breathing with stretching - which some sophisticated people call yoga.
My daughter doesn't care about Olunaku Luno but she likes the great hits of Juliana Kanyomozis and other contemporary artistes which have been composed by Sylver Kyagulanyi. So the guy connects with generations, and even as we eulogise Micheal Jackson, we can say there is also hope for Ugandan music.
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