Charles Obina may be one of those ‘natural’ adungu (harp) players. He grew up in northern Uganda in a family that was famous for playing traditional musical instruments such as the Adungu, thumb piano and tube fiddle, among others. Those things seemingly come naturally to people of his blood.
For him, playing traditional musical instruments is like a birth right, integral to his home and kinship, he says.
“I was born in a musical family that played all sorts of traditional musical instruments. But I chose to put more emphasis on the Adungu because that’s the instrument my father (the late Andrew Kiwel) used to play the most. I inherited it from him. It’s my signature instrument,” says 29-year-old Obina, who is also a singer, songwriter and guitarist.
The Adungu is a unique nine-10 stringed musical instrument from the Alur ethnic group of northwestern Uganda and can be played alone or with vocal accompaniment.
Obina is referred to by many as the Uganda’s “Adungu ambassador” because of his passion and skills at playing and promoting the instrument.
Charles Obina with his traditional music instrument, adungu. PHOTO | POOL
In fact, he is so passionate about the Adungu that he upgraded his to 22 strings, increasing the capability of its improvisation, such as playing of other non-traditional genres like blues and smooth jazz.
The beginning
Artists’ children usually have obvious advantages: art is not only practiced and encouraged at home, but their parents are also more likely than others to tolerate the interplay between focused and free thought, which allows the children to take whatever career path they wish to.
Obina started playing the Adungu at the age of seven after observing his father’s own work and seeing creativity as alternately joyful. His skills at playing the adungu exceeded those of his peers and by the age of 10 he had won several prizes in primary school music competitions.
But his big break came in 2005 when his school, Patongo Primary School in Agogo district, northern Uganda, qualified for the first time to represent the district in a hotly contested annual National Schools Music Festival.
This story of children from the war zone singing and dancing attracted American filmmakers Sean Fine and Andrea Nix who documented their journey from northern Ugandan to the music competition in Kampala.
Titled War/Dance, one can visualise the early, painful life of Obina and his counterparts in this emotional film that was so awe-inspiring that it got an Oscar nod. War/Dance opened many doors for the young Obina: he was offered scholarships in secondary schools and also got offers to play in some cultural music groups in Kampala.
But even though Obina saw playing traditional musical instruments as his birth right, he also knew that talent and creativity must also be nurtured. He later enrolled at the Africa Institute of Music, where studied jazz and contemporary guitar.
Upon graduation in 2017, Obina founded the Adungu Revolution, one of the few bands in Uganda that play original fusion music. The band consists of six members: Charles Obina (lead singer and Adungu player), Gilbert Omony (basist), Isaiah Misanvu (percussionist), Jonathan Jagwe (guitarist), Moses Owere (drummer) and Bosco Okema (thumb pianist).
Adungu Revolution has now made itself a name in the Ugandan music industry playing at various concerts and functions – and especially at traditional weddings of people from northern Uganda.
Obina has also regularly performed solo at various concerts and at international music festivals such as the Bayimba International Music Festival in Kampala. In 2022, he also played at a tourism festival organised by the Uganda Tourism Board in Moscow, Russia, and in 2023 he was one of the headliners at the Uganda Independence Day celebrations in Nairobi, Kenya.
Today, Obina writes his own songs expressing his own life experiences and those of his community. His music is majorly about social change and justice and he says he draws inspiration from the works of musicians such as Geoffrey Oryema, Fela Kuti and Oliver Mtukuzi, among others.
Singing in his Alur mother tongue, Obina has so far recorded several songs, with his most popular ones being Abio (I will Arrive), which is meant to inspire people who are struggling to keep pushing. Abio was used as the soundtrack for a Swedish documentary film titled Tracing Grace.
His other popular song is Kucodwogo (Peace is Back), which celebrates the return of peace to northern Uganda after years of armed conflicts that involved warlord Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels and the Ugandan government forces.
Kucodwogo is inspired by his own experiences as a child who was a victim of the war. As a child, Obina lived in one of the largest internally displaced people’s camps in northern Uganda when his father and 28 of his relatives and numerous people from his village were murdered in cold blood by the LRA.
His most recent release is Adungu Blues, which is a collaboration with Alif Chief, a Bruneian Rock and Blues musician.
But it’s not all roses for Obina. His biggest challenge as an Adungu player in Uganda, he says, is that many Ugandans don’t appreciate traditional music, “which is the opposite abroad.”
