Davis Hillary Ntare from Kampala performs during the Tusker Project Fame show on November 7, 2010. Photo/ELVIS OGINA
Flashback to 1975. Idi Amin’s reign of terror in Uganda is at its peak. The crackdowns by the dreaded State Research Bureau spare no one, not even musicians.
A young singer and guitarist called Sammy Kasule flees a dragnet by the secret police and makes his way across the border to Kenya.
He goes on to make Nairobi his base and becomes one of the biggest music stars in East Africa of the next decade.
Fast-forward to 2010 and another Ugandan singer is thrust in the spotlight before an unsurpassed television audience across East Africa.
Like Kasule, a generation before him, life has presented challenges to Davis Hillary Ntare, winner of the Tusker Project Fame, Season 4.
Ntare’s attempt at the previous edition of TPF had ended in misery when the judges were not impressed and sent him away at the audition stage.
This year Ntare not only made it as a contestant on the show but also won the ultimate prize of Ksh5 million ($625,00) and a recording contract with South African label Gallo Records.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Nairobi was the recording and performance hub for musicians from East and Central Africa.
When Kasule came to Nairobi, he joined the group Makonde and wrote the classic song Marie Wandaka.
He was with the band when they performed alongside the legendary pop group Boney M in Nairobi in 1978 and later did a two-month tour of the UK.
At that time, reality television contests and corporate sponsorship had not been dreamed up; it took sheer grit and determination to succeed in music.
Ironically, Kasule’s arrival in Nairobi came just two years before the break-up of then East Africa Community.
That first attempt at regional cooperation lasted no more than 10 years.
But even after the EAC disintegrated, Nairobi remained a thriving hub for the region’s best musicians.
The competition between musicians grew with the arrival of bands from Kinshasa, fleeing political upheaval in what was then known as Zaire.
With their lively cavacha musical style, bands such as Les Kinoirs Super Mazembe, Les Mangelepa and Orchestra Makassy became household names in Kenya.
It is worth remembering that this fast-paced Congolese rhythm that was all the rage across the dancehalls of East Africa, developed further out of a fusion with Kenyan benga, to become the soukous style of the 1980s.
Tanzanian music was booming too, thanks to the state sponsorship of groups like DDC Milimani Park Orchestra, Jamhuri Jazz, Vijana Jazz and Nuta Jazz (later Juwata Jazz Band).
Many years before what the Tanzanians today call bongo flava became an East African phenomenon, East Africans were tuning in on their shortwave receivers to Radio Tanzania Dar Es Salaam (RTD), to hear the latest rhumba hits.
But many Tanzanian musicians were hungry for more sophisticated studios than those on offer at RTD.
Guitarist and singer Mbaraka Mwinshehe recorded most of his hits with Morogoro Jazz Band and later Orchestra Volcano, at the Polygram Studios in Nairobi.
Also to emerge from Tanzania was Arusha Jazz, which later gave birth to Simba Wanyika, led by brothers Wilson, George and William Kinyonga.
Simba Wanyika’s all time hit Shauri Yako remains a favourite at zilizopendwa (golden oldies) joints.
Wanyika shifted to Nairobi in 1971 enlisting Kenyan musicians into their ranks, and warding off the onslaught of Congolese musicians like Samba Mapangala, Moreno and Lovy Longomba, who were all performing in Nairobi then.
This brand of easy listening Kiswahili rhumba with intricate instrumentation, which was the hallmark of Tanzanian bands, was to influence a whole generation of bands and orchestras.
Kenyan bands like Maroon Commandos, formed by military officers, and Nairobi Matata, are two such groups.
The Congolese wave was also sweeping through Tanzania where bands like Orchestra Maquis (whose 1984 song Karubandika is a classic) introduced guitars to complement the hitherto unrivalled horn section and chose to forgo Lingala lyrics in favour of Kiswahili idioms.
In 1978 “Dr Remmy” Ongala (Sura Mbaya) arrived in Dar from Kivu via Uganda, where he played briefly with Grand Mika Jazz.
Remy introduced his brand of ubongo music, rhumba with a socio-political message.
This icon of East African music, whose biggest hit was an ode to death called Kifo, passed away recently after a long battle with diabetes.
Those early years saw plenty of comings and goings between musicians in East Africa.
And just as it was to be in the 1980s and 1990s, the impact of Congolese music was huge.
The presence of big record companies such as EMI, CBS and Polygram was another attraction.
Many of these bands had a membership drawn from across East Africa and because their hits transcended the region’s borders, they were at home performing before crowds at Nairobi’s Starlight Club, the Mecca of the region’s music for more than two decades.
They also dominated Garden Square and The Inn in the park at Uhuru Park.
The political relations between the leaders of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania had led to the breakdown of the EAC in 1977.
Ironically, this period proved to be one of the most vibrant for the music business, with intense borrowing, exchange and collaboration between musicians.
By the time Ugandan singer and guitarist Kasule settled in Nairobi and established himself as a force to reckon with, singing unforgettable hits like his English version of Shauri Yako (Go on Your Way) and Kukupenda, he was following a path that had been trod by Tanzanian and Congolese musicians.
Nairobi was the heartbeat of the East African sound and Kiswahili was the lingua franca of the region’s music.
A whole generation has gone by since Kasule’s glory days (he’s now based in Sweden), and how the music has changed!
Gone are the analog studios. Few of today’s musicians have laid eyes on a vinyl record and music sales have diminished with the rise of the Internet, file sharing and mobile phone downloads.
Even radio now shares its vaunted position as a powerful tool of promotion, with online social media sites and viral videos.
No less an artiste than Ugandan President Museveni recently became an Internet sensation, thanks to his Kinyankole rap song, You want another rap?
Youthful East Africans changed the lyrics to: “You want another drink?”
Today’s East African musicians enjoy a multiplicity of digital platforms and it is not necessarily the best musicians who succeed.
Rather than wait for the big recording deal like happened in the past, the artiste now controls his own studio and decides when and how his music gets released.
The borders have been broken down and a new era of integration has emerged in East African music.
Since 1956, the Europeans have had the Eurovision Sing Contest, a competition involving amateur talent across the continent battling to get votes to win the major prize.
This concept has in the past few years given birth to Pop Idol, X Factor, Star Academy and many reality shows on television.
The just ended Tusker Project Fame was a similar meeting point for raw talent from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Sudan.
Three contestants from each country were thrown together in a house where their skills were put under the glaring spotlight of television viewers from all competing countries.
After eight weeks of competition and performances, Davis Hillary Ntare (25) of Kampala, impressed the judges and the voting public in the greater East Africa to win the prize money and a recording contract with South African label Gallo Records.
Ntare is the second Ugandan to win the competition, after his counterpart Esther Nabasa’s victory two years ago.
Kenya’s Valerie Kimani won the inaugural contest, while Rwanda’s Alpha Rwirangira won the third season of the show.
So what value does this cross regional television contest offer?
John Katana of Them Mushrooms, a band whose songs have reverberated throughout the region for three decades, thinks the TPF does little to forge an East African identity.
“If the Tanzanian contestant who was second had been fluent in English, he might have won the show but instead the competition is about how Western the singers sound,” Katana says.
For a show whose stated aim is to be “100 per cent African,” it was rather odd to see the winning contestant perform Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean.
However, you could hear the wild cheers across the region when he took to the stage with Tanzania’s Matonya to sing Anita and Vaileti, both huge hits.
Just as language was a factor with the itinerant musicians of the 1970s and 1980s, Kiswahili is a major factor in the popularity of the current generation of musicians.
Uganda’s Jose Chameleone started his career in Kenya, a little over 10 years ago, working with Nairobi’s Ogopa DJs production stable.
To date his biggest hits across East Africa are in Kiswahili: Mama Mia, Kipepeo, Bei Kali and Mambo Bado.
The closing ceremony of TPF provided other illustrations of this cross-regional cultural integration.
One of the judges on the show was Robert ‘R Kay’ Kamanzi, a highly rated producer who made Nairobi his home after fleeing his country, Burundi, at the height of the genocide.
One of Kamanzi’s productions was performed on the show: Haturudi Tena, a big pop anthem, by Kidum, a fellow Burundian, also based in Kenya.
Credit for the production also goes to Uganda’s Julianna Kanyomozi, another judge on TPF.
Some performers think that language or style is no hindrance to winning the affections of East Africans.
Makadem, one of Kenya’s most energetic performers of Afro fusion, says: “The audiences in Uganda and Tanzania are more receptive to artistes than those in Kenya. I have sung several times in Luo and the people like it,” Makadem says.
East Africa has never produced a truly world class musician, in the vein of Salif Keita of Mali, Youssou N’dour of Senegal or Hugh Masekela of South Africa.
The region’s musicians have experimented with various forms of contemporary music — hip hop to Afro fusion — without forging a strong brand.
This new cultural integration will be in vain if the rich musical forms among the member countries are not harnessed into a powerful force.
There are many music giants on whose shoulders the new stars of East Africa stand.
The late D.O Misiani, who incidentally was born in Tanzania but whose benga combined the best elements of traditional Luo music from Kenya and guitar sounds, was a big hit in Germany, creating what ethnomusicologists termed one of the truly authentic genres of music to emerge from this region.
There are a myriad opportunities, presented by platforms like the recently ended Tusker Project Fame, to raise not just the amity among the people of East Africa but also to develop and promote innovative forms of art that will win the region respect worldwide.
