Taking Cues from the Tale: Structuring the Book
The overall structure of Interpreting Court Song in Uganda’s narrative utilizes storytelling techniques that Baganda use in oral tradition and expression, including repetition, variation, dialogue, and extemporization. The book has six parts, the first of which features three foundational chapters. Chapter 1 (“Political Landscape, Court Music, and Research Collaborators”) presents pertinent background information on political life in the Kingdom of Buganda before and after its 1966 abolition, Buganda-Uganda relations, and connections between politics and lyrical interpretation. The chapter further introduces the main characters we encounter in the book’s narrative, including court music composer-performers, interpreters, and other research collaborators. It also interrogates the history of gender and court music performance in Buganda. Chapter 2 (“Research Methods and Approaches to Lyrical Interpretation”) engages with the key themes of my research methods and approaches, including lyrical interpretation, collaborative research, court song, musical analysis, power dynamics, and ethnography. Chapter 3 (“A Multi-Epistemological Framework: Discourses and Canons”) presents a discussion of the key theoretical discourses and canons with which this book engages and their relevance to the study’s multi-epistemological framework. This discussion covers a variety of topics, including representation, Kiganda song, meaning, power relations, history, and temporality.
Parts 2–6 draw on the ideas that came from my conversations with the composer-performers and interpreters of the court songs presented throughout the book. A diverse set of themes emerged when we looked at the song repertoire’s content, its background stories, lyrical interpretations, and analyses of all these elements together. These themes provide the structure and frame the language of part 2 (“Songs about Political Engagement, Criticism, and Commentary”), part 3 (“Songs about Leadership and Responsibility”), part 4 (“Songs about Loyalty and Duty”), part 5 (“Songs about Mutuality and Cooperation”), and part 6 (“Songs about Conflict and Loss”). In addition to providing different angles on power relations and serving as the backbone of my theorization of these relations in chapter 3, these themes draw out the complexity of lyrical meaning and highlight the collective meaning-making process that is central to sociopolitical life in Uganda.
In addition, my use of a song-based chapter format within each of these parts emerged from some of the points that court musicians raised in our interviews. Respecting their preference, I treat each song in a separate chapter. The chapter titles highlight the themes set forth in the songs. Thus, chapter 4 (“‘The Handsome Catch a Slight Squint’: False Praise”), chapter 5 (“‘Fair-Skinned’: Flattery, Deceit, and Satire”), and so on.
Each chapter in parts 2–6 explores the history of the song it focuses on and what the work’s lyrics reveal about power relations in Buganda and Uganda. Within the chapter, composer-performers primarily provide insight into the relevance of Kiganda court songs to Buganda’s political past before the twenty-first century, while interpreters focus on the repertoire’s significance in twenty-first-century Uganda. I structure these song-based chapters with a generic progression: (1) a background story about the song that the chapter examines, often narrated by the performer; (2) analysis of this background; (3) discussion of the song’s sonic or stylistic elements and presentation of its lyrics in Luganda and English; (4) an analytical summary of the lyrics; (5) interpretations of the lyrics by non-performers; (6) critical analysis of these interpretations; and (7) a conclusion. This structure allows me to prioritize the voices of my research collaborators, whose opinions make up the analytical bulk of Interpreting Court Song in Uganda. In this way we collectively engage with the critical political perspectives that one might find in modern-day Uganda. Only seldom does the book stray from this format, and these variations are slight. For example, chapter 16 discusses two songs rather than one, and chapter 23 features commentary from only one interpreter.
Finally, although all song-based chapters feature analyses and summaries of their lyrics, I also include their full transcriptions and translations (these are supplemented with audio recordings on the book’s companion website). As already pointed out, these transcriptions and translations are integral to this book’s interpretive approach, which requires readers to perform their own interpretations of the song lyrics presented in it. Readers may jump between chapters as they see fit for their own purposes, but I strongly suggest that they read part 1 chronologically and in full so that they can contextualize the songs they encounter in the following parts. This will give readers and listeners a fuller appreciation for the power and hidden meanings that these songs hold.