Kenya-based Ugandan gospel musician Ambassada

On Thursday nights, Kampala has yet another theme to offer to revellers and this time, it’s in a different light from what is en vogue on all other nights. Some people will be heading to the National Theatre for Comedy Nite and others will be preparing to go to the club to shake their bones. And a sizeable number of the denizens of this city will be heading to TLC Club on George Street, for a night of purely Christian entertainment.

Gospel music is rising up in Uganda. For long, it was looked down on for its boring format and poor artistes. For years, Ugandans have taken gospel music for granted seeing as the artistes themselves have always allowed to be used as doormats. Not any more, the artistes are saying.

“We are going up and there is no stopping us,” Hum Kay, one of Kampala’s most talented crooners, who is also the worship leader at Miracle Centre Cathedral in Kampala, says. He is a hot act in Kampala because his music demystifies the whole churchy perception that gospel might have held in the past. His Kampala is a very groovy track that is not out of place when it is played in the dance club. It does not come off as preachy, yet his message of Christian love for the city is not lost in the translation.

Gospel artistes may have been struck by the double standards in the field but they are surely not out of it. The present practice of sidelining Ugandan gospel artistes when they appear to perform alongside secular artistes has gone on for long, they feel. To be a gospel artiste in Uganda is to accept that the secular artistes are better and so when they go out to perform, they can only do the role of curtain raisers.

In Nairobi, Sseku Martin is appreciated for his talent. So is Ambassada who got a couple of nods at the Kisima Music Awards in 2004. In Uganda, it is a different story, it seems. Talented musicians like Tiki-Tah have to play the role of hangers on in Leone Island, Chameleone’s record studio and collaborate with Chameleone, for instance, Atufaako (He cares for us) which they did in 2004 when he feels like brushing up his image to make some inspirational music.

Following in the footsteps of Jose Chameleon and Kawesa: Martin Sseku, another Ugandan gospel artiste operating from Nairobi

Following in the footsteps of Jose Chameleon and Kawesa: Martin Sseku, another Ugandan gospel artiste operating from Nairobi

“It’s so unfair,” Bosco ‘Rwabs’ Rwabutogo, a presenter with Kampala’s Power FM radio, says. “But this is changing. Gospel artistes have woken up and they are definitely going to be taken seriously.”

Rwabs, who has dabbled in music himself in the past, does not see himself as a gospel artiste but as a concerned friend in a position to help these people. Every Saturday during his show, The Dance Party, which runs from 9.00 pm to 3.00 am on Saturday night, he gets as many as eight new tracks from budding artistes and they seem to have a lot of faith. This is the reason why Rwabs and a group of artistes in the gospel fraternity are taking somewhat drastic measures to see that the wrongs are righted.

Their plan is simple: they want to get all the gospel artistes they can under their fold and then from there, negotiate for them when it comes to shows in or outside the church setting. They want to do away with the notion that gospel artistes are just part time entertainers who will even perform for free. The fact that these people invest a lot of their time and resources into their craft should be reason enough for the music community to respect them and pay them accordingly. Such an arrangement would protect gospel artistes from being exploited.

According to Hum Kay, such an effort is very welcome. “The betrayal starts at home. Our home churches just don’t respect any one in gospel music ministry. At big functions, it is common to hear the MC say that before the man of God comes on to preach, the entertainers should ‘give us a few numbers’. This reduces the value of our talent,” he adds.

Isaac Rucci, formerly of the most successful Ugandan music group on the global scene, Limit X, has teamed up with Roger Mugisha, a former radio presenter and Christian activist to form the beginning of an organisation, Fishnet Entertainment, that will be the rallying point of the artistes.

Rucci is fully available after quitting Limit X.

“I had served enough and I wanted to come back home and settle,” he explained when asked why he left the group. “I felt that I was being led in a different direction and I could not ignore it. The rest of the group are still in the United States performing, though.”

Other heavy weights that are being brought on board are Doug B, a producer from Alpha One studios and one of the biggest promoters of gospel music in the country.

Steve Jean, who won the Best Producer of the Year Pearl of Africa Music Award in 2003, seems to think these guys have a point.

“What they are trying to do is not too ambitious. I think it is long overdue for gospel artistes to stand up and be counted and I am with them all the way,” he says over the phone.

Ugandan music producer Steve Jean

“Gospel has long been the undeclared flagship of Ugandan music. Look at Limit X. They moved the world for ten years and no secular group has achieved what these guys did,” he adds.

And Jean should know because he has worked with the artistes for a long time. If any one wanted to do a song that would be considered good, they went to this maestro. He has worked with First Love, Limit X, St CA, Kawesa, Peter Sematimba and many others.

But there are those who think gospel artistes have brought this unfair pegging on themselves. This school of thought believes that because the singers don’t want to accept that the world is moving and so everything in it has to change, they are being left behind. One of these is Richard Kawesa. As one of Uganda’s shinning stars, Kawesa’s voice is important in this debate. He is the president of the Music Forum, a lobby organisation that has been formed to push through reforms that would make the life of musicians better. He has been called the unofficial Member of Parliament of musicians. He is one of the many artistes who made the pilgrimage to Nairobi at the start of his career and made it big with songs like Omulunyanja. Recently, he has been more associated with the funky East Africa Hakuna Matata, a short techno-rave track that tells of the beauty of the people of East Africa

“Ugandan gospel artistes don’t want to cross over to genres that are demanded by the audiences they are targeting,” he says. “They have stuck in the past and they think the public still wants to hear church hymns. They should borrow a leaf from artistes like Kirk Franklin who have accepted the forces of change. We should remember that if we want to move the public with the message in our music, we must package it in an agreeable way so that they will listen.”

Julius Mbabazi, an avid music collector seems to think Kawesa has a point. “I buy lots of records but I find that the gospel artistes who have adopted styles close to the main steam are the better options,” he explains. “That leaves me with very few options in Uganda because most of the singers still have a church choir influence in their music,” he tells me.

This rigidity seems to be a result of the belief that since what they are doing is ministry; they don’t have to bend down to human standards. They think ministry is not about entertainment and so they stick to styles that have long been declared dead. “Singers should realise that what they are doing no matter who they are doing it for is entertainment,” Kawesa stresses.

This is in contrast with Pastor Robert Kayanja who is the mentor of Limit X, the force that gave them the necessary help when they were starting out more than a decade ago. “ We need musicians who can identify with the youth of this country and we must help them,” he said recently when Bebe Cool, one of Uganda’s top reggae performers, and his wife Zuena Kirema went to Miracle Centre Cathedral for night prayers.

When all is said and done however, the activists are trying to keep the important issues on the top of the agenda. They have an issue to deal with and this is the best way they have chosen to go about it. Sometimes, the churches that gospel artistes come from might seem to be unfeeling, but they just don’t know what to expect of these new alliances that are coming up and they don’t know how musicians in their churches can handle the mix.

Back to Top