Acknowledgments

No words can express the debt of gratitude I owe my dear wife, Betty, and my sons, Joshua, Jonathan, and Joseph, for their support throughout the process of researching and writing this book.

Interpreting Court Song in Uganda would not exist without the experiences and knowledge of the composer-performers who generously shared their versions of court songs as well as many of the stories presented throughout the book’s pages.1For other versions of the songs these musicians performed for this project see Anderson 1968; Cooke 1996, 1998; Kubik 1998, 2010; Tracey and Tracey 1998; and Wachsmann 1953. To these artists I am forever grateful: Albert Muwanga Ssempeke, Ludoviiko Sserwanga, Ssaalongo Kiwanuka Matovu Deziderio, Ssaalongo Paulo Kabwama, Albert Ssempeke Bisaso, Ssaalongo Ssennoga Majwala, Semeo Ssemambo Ssebuwufu, and Mukasa Kafeero.

Many thanks also to the research collaborators who interpreted the court songs in this manuscript: Edward Ssebunnya Kironde, Harriet Kisuule, John Magandaazi Kityo, Jimmy Ssenfuka Kibirige, Jessy Ssendawula, Steven Mukasa Kabugo, and Peter Kinene.

I am deeply indebted to my long-term collaborators Kabenge Gombe, Waalabyeki Magoba, Francisca Nakachwa, Jessy Sendawula, Jimmy Ssenfuka Kibirige, and Peter Kinene for their assistance with transcribing, translating, and analyzing the Luganda interviews on which this book’s narrative is based.

Deep thanks to the following Middlebury College student research assistants and collaborators for helping to refine and produce this book: Emma Binks, Annie Beliveau, Elizabeth Cady, Vaughan Supple, Angelina Como-Mosconi, Brett Sorbo, and Ryo Nishikubo.

I am also grateful to all the students enrolled in my courses at Middlebury College who engaged with some of the content of this book. These courses include African Music and Dance Performance, African Musical Lifestyles, African Soundscapes, Approaches to Music Inquiry, Music Ethnography, Music in World Cultures, Performance Lab-Afropop, Performing Arts and Community Engagement in Uganda, What in the World Is Music?, and World Musical Instruments.

Special thanks are owed to the Pabst Steinmetz Foundation and Middlebury College for funding the research for and publication of this book; to the editorial staff at the University of Rochester Press; and to outside readers for helping to get the manuscript published.

I am grateful to Katherine Scott and Joyce Li for copyediting, Marilyn Bliss for indexing, and Bernice Cheung for proofreading this book.

An alternate version of chapter 11 has appeared in the edited volume Ubuntu: A Comparative Study of an African Concept of Justice, edited by Paul Nnodim and Austin Okigbo (Leuven University Press, 2024). Excerpts from the prologue and chapter 1 appear in my contribution to a revised version of the Society for Ethnomusicology 2023 President’s Roundtable, “Tell Me a Story: Translating Experience into Ethnography” (forthcoming in Ethnomusicology 69, Fall 2025).