Working with Interpreters of the Songs’ Meanings
In the fall of 2019 and the spring of 2020, I returned to Buganda with court song recordings I had made and analyzed between 2003 and 2015. I identified a set of research collaborators, introduced the recordings to them, and asked them to reinterpret the repertoire’s lyrical content over several days, working with a different interviewee each day. Song interpreters included long-term colleagues or collaborators and a few individuals whom those collaborators introduced to me during the 2019 and 2020 research trips. In deciding my research group, I selected individuals who could provide a variety of perspectives on connections between the lyrical content of Kiganda court songs and political life in Uganda. I also ensured that all interviewees had an in-depth understanding of Buganda and Uganda’s political landscape and that they were fluent speakers of Luganda, the language in which I conducted most of the research for this book. The research collaborators included a medical student, a preschool teacher and activist, a popular music artist, two secondary-school English literature teachers, a traditional music artist and farmer, and a secondary-school art teacher and Luganda teacher as well as songwriter and poet. These participants’ varied experiences helped prompt a richer narrative where a wider variety of perspectives on power relations could shine through. This variety also helped reveal new insights into the relevance of historical repertoire to political life in twenty-first-century Uganda. In this way the interpreters, like performers, would become co-analysts, offering viewpoints to complement the lyrical analysis of this book.
By positioning interviewees as central actors in analyzing Kiganda court songs, Interpreting Court Song in Uganda embraced an interpretive approach that primarily came from these individuals’ commitment to promoting indigenous agency, and secondarily from voices in scholarly discourse. This approach required that I continuously build trust with them throughout the research process. It also required me to spend a considerable amount of time in the interpreters’ communities, exploring the realities and experiences that informed their analytical lenses. Some of this context was not obvious at first glance, and understanding it required me to develop familiarity with the spaces that my interviewees inhabited. If I had not generated good rapport with interpreters, I would not have been able to detect certain vital political undertones. This was also true in relation to the subtle inequalities of power that existed among certain groups, including kin, sexes, and genders. On many occasions, I deferred to interpreters on the most practical and nuanced evaluations of the song lyrics in question. My extended time in the field confirmed that Ugandan permanent residents were indeed better positioned than I was to decipher the nuances of the songs and to take a lead in analyzing them. These interpreters inhabited the spaces in which these songs have been historically composed and performed, and this meant that they had unique insights into the relevant sensibilities and conceptions associated with the repertoire’s lyrical content. Their active participation in analysis allowed them greater autonomy over the representation of their own ideas and resulted in the repertoire’s being grounded in a broader cultural context. By prompting participants to freely explore power dynamics in personal and communal spaces via the interpretive process, I sought to account for important aspects of their lives in my representation of those ideas. Many remained open to the multitude of analytical possibilities that the songs made available to them, which in turn made them more self-aware of the uniqueness of their respective contributions.
During interviews, no two interpretations of a single song were similar, and in many cases a single interviewee provided multiple interpretations of a song. Even when interpreters discussed common topics, their interpretations varied greatly, as each contained details of their individual lives. Given their extended involvement in the meaning-making process, these interviewees were not simply subjects of study: they were co-analysts who brought their creativity and experiences to the interpretive process and cultivated meaningful reflections on the song’s subject matter. They detected and commented on power relations, not only as a series of abstract ideas but as extensions of their day-to-day life. For example, in her interpretation of the song “We Love the Supreme Man [King] Exceedingly” (“Ssaabasajja Tumwagala Nnyo”), discussed in chapter 18, Harriet Kisuule noted,
The same was true of President Museveni at first, when he had first come from the bush war. However, as the Baganda say,
Ekiwoomereze ekitata, kizaala enkenku (Constant sweetening leads to stale beer spoiled by the lack of sorghum ferment).
Enkenku comes about when the banana juice fails to ferment properly and therefore fails to make a good beverage. This ruins the brewing process and creates a liquid that is stale and spoiled, having not fully completed the fermentation cycle. Anyone who drinks this stale beer will notice its flaws immediately. They might complain to the brewer, who, though he began with a good purpose, did not fully see the process through and as a result has ruined what he initially tried to create. The same is true of President Museveni. The power that came along with ruling distracted him from fulfilling his initial promises to the people. He has lost focus and turned against the interests of his people. As a result, there is a great amount of political tension, and the people are now willing to support opposition figures like Bobi Wine. They are disillusioned, frustrated with President Museveni’s inability to deliver. He lost focus, and in turn the people’s love for him subsided.
1Kisuule interview, December 21, 2019.In John Magandaazi Kityo’s interpretation, he recognized the complexity of power relations between composer-performers of political songs and their audiences, noting,
The ability to communicate a message to listeners is a God-given gift. However, sometimes this gift can come with troubles. If a performer sings a song that unflatteringly references the leader, they will be summoned to the CID (Criminal Investigations Directorate) offices to explain themselves. The CID officers must then listen to the song in question to try and parse out the intention behind it. This ability to instinctually understand the meanings of songs is another quality gifted by God. So, on the whole, the relationship between singers and leadership is one that can be fraught with tension and ultimately relies on the ability to communicate and interpret subtle signals.
2Kityo interview, December 14, 2019.As research collaborators wove their lived experiences and emotions into the songs they analyzed through unique anecdotes, perspectives, and digressions on the repertoire’s lyrics, they simultaneously brought them to life and expanded their network of meanings. Many used the songs’ lyrics as a mechanism for speaking to future audiences in intimate and transformative ways such as suggesting new possibilities for how people should live and relate to one another. As such, their interpretations and the meanings they derived from the songs were applicable to power relations as they might manifest in global contexts. Interpreters recombined conceptions to imagine potentialities beyond the original intentions of the songs’ lyrics. Indeed, this project benefited from each interviewee’s intimate familiarity with the cultural context, subject matter, and language of the court songs I was investigating. The perspectives of Ugandan interpreters on these songs constitute one of the key elements of this study that makes it accessible to a wider audience.