Nihiloxica - Source of Denial

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 192, November 2023.

Nihiloxica
Source of Denial
Crammed Discs (40 mins)

Nihiloxica were one of the highlights of this year’s WOMAD festival, after their scheduled appearance in 2022 was stymied by visa problems. The life of a band isn’t the simplest when half of you are based in Uganda and the other half are based in the UK. These experiences have fed directly into the overarching theme of the group’s second full-length album: it is a stinging critique of the UK’s draconian visa and immigration process.

The pounding Bugandan polyrhythms of the engalabi, namunjoloba and empuunyi drums meet the abrasive, overdriven synths of industrial trance. Extreme metal influence is heard throughout, from harsh noisescapes to doom-laden detuned bass-synth chugs. Across the whole album, computer-generated voices stand in for the monolithic state machine. It all serves to communicate the evil banality of bureaucracy, not just impersonal but anti-personal, reducing people’s rich lives and complex stories to a phone-tree, where injustices are in-baked as part of a system meticulously rigged to avoid even the merest suggestion of accountability. It sounds oppressive, because it is; it feels dystopian because it is – the reality of anyone without a powerful passport.

It’s heavy stuff, and rightly so. It is political protest, yes, but make no mistake, this is dance music. And you will dance: movement is forced from you by the sheer power of aggressive musical passion. Source of Denial is an impactful album, and its music is absolutely brilliant.

My Instrument: Nakibembe Xylophone Troupe and their Embaire

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 178, June 2022.



There’s a worn-out cliché of a proverb that says ‘it takes a village to raise a child.’ In the Ugandan kingdom of Busoga, it takes a village to play a xylophone. The instrument is the embaire, and the village of Nakibembe is world-renowned for its musicians’ prowess.

The embaire is huge. It is three metres long, and its 21 keys are played by six musicians, who sit three per side. Each musician plays a relatively simple repeating pattern across three or four keys, but multiplied six-fold they create an intense battery of ever-evolving interlocking sonic shapes. From this dense tangle of sound, distinct melodies, basslines and drum rhythms emerge, each musician’s abstract part combining into an entrancing whole. “It’s a bit like jazz,” explains Nassar Kinobe, the singer and bass-keys-specialist in the Nakibembe Xylophone Troupe. “Everyone is playing a different thing, but there is always a connection between them. And there are things we can’t explain, it’s like magic. When we start playing, there is momentum. Anything can change and become a perfect part of a pattern, even if it’s an accident!”

The instrument itself is a feat of carpentry. The keys of the embaire are made from the wood of the omusambya (Markhamia lutea or Nile tulip), and its beaters are made from the wood of the nzo (Teclea nobilis). The omusambya wood is carefully hewn with a special axe-chisel called the eyiga; the tuning is incredibly precise – each small chip of a giant key is an irreparable alteration – and measured entirely by ear.

When played in the villages of Busoga, the keys are laid on banana stems and placed over a 50cm-deep pit dug into the ground. This trough provides a booming resonance that enhances the instrument’s bass keys, connecting the embaire to the land of its ancestors in a very literal way. It also makes it a challenge to set up on a stage – the concept of transporting a hole is a bit of an ontological head-scratcher. But with multiple international appearances under their belt, the Nakibembe Xylophone Troupe have found a way around that challenge. Each time they travel abroad, a specially-built box is commissioned to stand in for the earthen pit. The original keys from Nakibembe are then placed upon the new resonator, creating a hybrid instrument: half-Soga, half-international.



The Nakibembe Xylophone Troupe don’t just carry the name of their village out of sentimentality; the group is interwoven with the community itself. They are more than six musicians. In fact, they’re more like a football team. They have their ‘starting line-up,’ who are usually the ones who tour abroad, but there are many other players in the troupe who can sub in whenever necessary – the village even has a youth ensemble for the trainees.

Arising in the 1970s, the giant 21-keyed version of the embaire is a fairly modern innovation on an ancient instrument, but it’s already a valuable tradition in Nakibembe. “It’s become something big, and we want to keep it going,” says Rashidi Ngobi. Affectionately referred to as ‘the old man’ by the rest of the musicians, Ngobi is the troupe’s elder, and the one who holds the embaire’s history. “If we teach people, and then they teach people, then it lives on because our ancestors did the same thing. My job is to inspire the young generation and to make sure that I leave something for them. When they have children, they should teach them the same thing and keep the legacy going.”

Behind the intricate melodies and rhythms interlaced into a complex cacophony lies a simple truth: “The embaire was created to help take away sorrow, to bring joy, and to make people forget their suffering. Its history is about people coming together and creating something for a cause,” says Ngobi. With an instrument this big, it really does take a village to play the embaire.


Photos, from top: Nakibembe Xylophone Troupe live at CTM Festival 2020, by Stefanie Kulisch; the keys of the Nakibembe embaire.

A Life's Work: Ssewa Ssewa

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 161, October 2020.



Air travel can be a fraught experience for musicians. There are many heart-breaking stories of delicate and priceless instruments arriving at their destination in irreparable pieces. For Ugandan musician Ssewa Ssewa, though, a brush with customs officials eventually led to the invention of a whole new instrument and a determination to bring Uganda to the world stage.

James Ssewakiryanga Jr, known on stage as Ssewa Ssewa, was always going to be a musician. His childhood was filled with music: “It was easy for me to pick up music because that’s the kind of language that was around me in my growing days as a little boy. Everyone that came into my home was a musician.” The start of Ssewa Ssewa’s musical education came from his mother, a dancer, who made sure to teach her son the basics and sent him to attend music schools. It also helped that his father was a master of the engoma drums and an accomplice to the late Albert Ssempeke as he rebuilt the ancient royal music of the Buganda Kingdom after the fall of Idi Amin.

Starting off by playing the large communal xylophone, the amadinda, Ssewa Ssewa soon moved on to study the engoma with his father and then the adungu (bow-harp). “From then I kept on adding different instruments!” As he became a professional musician, Ssewa Ssewa’s music was rooted in the traditional. With the adungu as his instrument of choice, he began touring the world with various ensembles. But he was exasperated at how little Ugandan culture was known in Europe. People knew the West African kora but not the adungu; they knew the Zimbabwean mbira but not its Ugandan cousin, the akogo. This cultural ignorance came to a head in 2014, at Copenhagen airport, where he was stopped from boarding a plane to Switzerland. His prized adungu, which used large nails as tuning pegs, was labelled as a security risk and couldn’t be brought on board. It was a frustration, but Ssewa Ssewa was equal to it, and understanding: “The reality stands that if you’re going into a culture where they don’t know this kind of instrument, and they’re looking at sharp objects, at some point you’re going to have trouble having this instrument go through.” Nevertheless, it was a problem he didn’t want to encounter again.

Over the next few years, an idea took shape and solidified. He would create his own instrument that could become known both inside and outside Uganda, one that could be both modern and traditional at once, and one that could tour the world uninhibited by unfair hostility. Working together with carpenters Mubiru Deo and Steven Kibombo, Ssewa Ssewa created the janzi. Although based on the adungu, the janzi is clearly a modern invention. The adungu’s skin soundboard is replaced with polished wood; the nails replaced with mechanical tuning pegs. Where the adungu has one set of strings, the janzi has two. “We worked through different tunings and we ended up with two different scales,” Ssewa Ssewa explains. “The uniqueness of the instrument is that I tune a Western diatonic scale on my left and an African pentatonic scale on my right. I describe it as collaboration, because I am bringing worlds together.”

By using two different tunings, the janzi itself becomes a metaphor for Ssewa Ssewa’s music and his whole outlook on life. He can switch effortlessly between the Ugandan and the international, and create music that speaks to people, whatever culture they’re from. It’s also reflected in the name: janzi comes from ‘ejanzi’, the Luganda word for grasshopper, an insect that flies from one place to another with ease. The imagery spoke to Ssewa Ssewa so strongly that he’s built his life around it: it’s the name of his instrument, his band, his recording studio, his charity (helping children with disabilities through music) and his youngest daughter. Janzi is his life’s work.

Ssewa Ssewa’s first worldwide release is a perfect representation of the Ugandan and the international. Nva K’la means ‘From Kampala,’ and it’s a love letter to the sounds of his home city. Kampala is a hub, attracting people from all over the country, each bringing with them their own rich musical heritage. When he plays, Ssewa Ssewa is making the music of the whole of Uganda, not just one set of people. “I want to explain through my music that if you come to Uganda, you’re going to listen to different kinds of sound. We have so many cultures here, and every culture has their own sound, their own style of playing music. When you come to Kampala you feel it, you feel and hear all those different cultures.” Nva K’la reflects that metropolitan hustle and bustle. Starting with the popular baksimba dance rhythm, he adds influences from many different traditional musics from Uganda and overlays them with modern sounds from the local and the global, including soul and reggae. Traditional instruments such as the adungu, akogo, endingidi (one-string fiddle), endongo (lyre), amadinda and engoma sit alongside a legion of guitars, basses and keyboards, all brought together and mediated by the new-traditional janzi. This is how Ssewa Ssewa wants people to think of Ugandan music: as an exciting plurality, a range of music spanning from the centuries-old to the freshly-made-this-morning but that could only come from one place. He wants to stoke pride in the Ugandan nation, where all its people, with their many cultures, can contribute to a united identity to share with the world.

At their core, however, the reasons for his innovations stem from European ignorance: ignorance of customs officials about the make-up and meaning of an ancient instrument, ignorance of the music-listening public about Ugandan music as its own, identifiable culture. It should shame us that this collective ignorance has led musicians to feel the need to create entirely new instruments and ways of playing just to get heard. But necessity is the mother of invention, and Ssewa Ssewa’s ambitions and achievements are important, potentially long-lasting, and very danceable. Stay tuned to hear more Ugandan music in the future, under Ssewa Ssewa’s watch: “I want to lead audiences to take note of our sounds from Uganda. We have so much talent here that the world has not seen. ”


Photo: Ssewa Ssewa and his janzi, by Walter Keys.

The Greatest Albums You've Never Heard: Bernard Kabanda - Olugendo

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 140, August/September 2018 as my small contribution to the article 'The Greatest Albums You've Never Heard.'

Bernard Kabanda
Olugendo
WOMAD Select (1999, 55 mins)

Olugendo is simply beautiful, although it’s not simple at all. Bernard Kabanda was a master of kadongo kamu music from Uganda. That literally means ‘just a small guitar’ – and that was all he needed.

Holding his acoustic guitar in a uniquely horizontal position, he somehow managed to play a bassline, chords, melody and tap a rhythm with his elbow all at the same time, the parts interweaving with mind-bending polyrhythms that makes it difficult to believe it all comes from one man. The real mastery is that it doesn’t sound complicated; it sounds like the easiest thing in the world. On top of it all are his cheery voice and delightful whistling. Kabanda’s songs are so sincere and often dark, but they’re filled with a cheeky humour that gets you smiling along, even if your Luganda is a little rusty.

Sadly, Kabanda died soon after this record was released in 1999. He was only 40 years old. We’re very lucky that he managed to get a slice of his wonderful music recorded before then. This is a truly and utterly joyous album, and it deserves to be much more widely heard.

Ganda Boys - Mountains of the Moon

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 112, November 2015.

Ganda Boys
Mountains of the Moon
Big World Records (67 mins)

Ganda Boys are a trio of two Ugandans and an American based in the UK, and Mountains of the Moon marks the group’s third album.

Getting straight to the point, most of the tracks on this album are extremely cheesy (it’s full of synth strings, choirs and piano ballads) or else simply dull. The music mostly moves around the poppy soul and gospel spheres with hints of rock and hip-hop on occasion – there’s a couple of good raps here and there, although the liner notes don’t tell us who provides them.

A few of the pieces begin promisingly enough, their intros maybe setting up an intriguing groove on adungu harp or rumba-influenced guitar. But this interest is invariably lost when the tracks descend into overdone reverb and boring predictability.

There is no tasteful brevity here either, as the album comprises of 17 tracks and lasts over an hour. Overall, it does get better towards the end, in the last three tracks or so, but by then it’s too little too late.