Kiganda Court Music in Postcolonial Buganda

Between 1967 and 1993 and following Buganda’s restoration, efforts to revive standard court songs led their performers to present them in the context of national politics rather than in their historical royal contexts. As a result, the musicians performed the songs in ways that did not limit their lyrics to these contexts. In fact, the content of many standard court songs became widely applicable to a variety of national political situations, with their performers playing key roles in these settings. Still, the songs were in popular decline, which weighed heavily on these dedicated court performers. Given the importance of their songs’ lyrical content in both Kiganda philosophy and day-to-day life, these artists were eager to share with me, a Muganda ethnomusicologist, their versions of the court songs they had learned and performed for decades. Moreover, they wanted these songs to be accessible to many people in hopes that they might be able to revive their art form.

Some of the factors responsible for the decline of Kiganda court songs at the time of my research (2000–2020) included the precarious position in which Kiganda court music had been since the restoration of Buganda in 1993. Although surviving court composer-performers attempted to carry on the legacy of court music, they faced an uphill battle against twenty-first-century musical alternatives such as pop and electronic music and the greater disinterest of the younger generation in maintaining tradition. Most young people lacked knowledge of Kiganda court songs and its importance within the culture of Buganda and the nation of Uganda and thus had limited knowledge of their own history. Some even framed these songs as something just for the elders, and hence they did not make efforts to keep the repertoire relevant to modern demands.

Musicians’ efforts to carry forward court music traditions and practices were also undermined by infrequent opportunities to perform as a result of the tense relationship between the central government of Uganda and the country’s different kingdoms. Consequently, these musicians began to perform court songs in non-royal contexts, a trend that prompted the older generation that had once listened attentively to these songs with the goal of learning and applying the lessons in their lyrics to instead focus on the entertaining aspects of the repertoire’s performances. Now, while entertaining the masses, the musicians were also contributing to other sectors of society by providing political perspectives and boosting the economy. Such roles underscored the extent to which their songs were still part and parcel of life in Uganda. Interpreting Court Song in Uganda joined the court music specialists I worked with in arguing that court songs were too significant and integral to the people’s lives to vanish entirely. Some research collaborators even equated the relationship between these songs and political life in Buganda to that of the snail and its shell: the snail grows by creating a new shell; its existence depends on this new, larger shell.

A major obstacle to resuming the regular performance of court songs was the growth in popularity of foreign media and technology. The extent to which mass media introduced foreign cultural products and traditions into preexisting local culture, including traditional musical arts, is documented in Gerhard Kubik’s work.1Kubik 2010, 32. Here, a push and pull between the new and the old is inevitable. As Kofi Agawu points out, even as many traditional elements of African music remain omnipresent, others are either reincorporated with or replaced by new elements, like pop music and electronic production.2Agawu 2016, 41. Although Buganda’s main royal court still featured court songs during the research that underlies this book, these performances were rare. When they occurred, they were often supplemented with music played on stereo systems and other forms of modern technology, which detracted from the improvisatory aspects and analog musical instruments that had historically accompanied court song lyrics. This arrangement furthered the songs’ decline by pressuring the royal court, one of the final enduring bastions of tradition, to adopt modern tendencies. These developments remind us of J. H. Kwabena Nketia’s observation that traditional music thrives when we preserve it in changed contexts rather than avoid such change as if it will infect the music.3Wiggins 2005, 74. Moreover, the developments echo Michael Bakan’s definition of tradition as “a process of creative transformation whose most remarkable feature is the continuity it nurtures and sustains.”4Bakan 2007, xxviii.