Uganda: Imagine Kirk Franklin in Kampala

Uganda: Imagine Kirk Franklin in Kampala

The Monitor (Kampala)

7 March 2008
Posted to the web 6 March 2008

Moses Serugo

American Contemporary Christian Music artiste Kirk Franklin is expected to hold two concerts in Uganda in May. Franklin will perform on May 9 and 10 at Serena Hotel and at a yet unconfirmed venue.

Tour organisers Fishnext and Sleek Promotions are yet to decide between the Lugogo Cricket Oval and Hotel Africana's People's Space.

Franklin will perform alongside the African Children's Choir (ACC), a group of young choristers often mistaken for KPC's globetrotting Watoto children's choir. ACC commands a bigger profile having scored two movie soundtracks namely: Blood Diamond and Hotel Rwanda.

They performed at last year's American Idol finale and together with Mariah Carey during 2007's Glamour Magazine Woman of the Year awards show in New York in November last year.

They also performed with Carey at 2005's Live 8 Concert in Philadelphia, USA. ACC is slated to perform at the Commonwealth Day at Westminster Abbey on March 10 at a gala to be attended by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and current Commonwealth chairman President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.

Franklin hit the global music scene in 1993 with his debut album Kirk Franklin & the Family and is considered to be one of the brightest stars in contemporary gospel music.

The album spent 100 weeks on the gospel charts, crossed over to the R&B charts, and became the first gospel debut album to go platinum. His second album, Kirk Franklin & the Family Christmas, became the genre's first Christmas album to make it to number one, and his 1996 album Whatcha Lookin' 4 went gold as soon as it was distributed.

This phenomenal success had pundits hailing him as "the Garth Brooks of gospel." Franklin's road to the top, though quick, was far from smooth according to a profile on www.allmusic.com.

He was abandoned by his mother and never knew his father. Franklin was raised by his Aunt Gertrude, a deeply religious woman who raised him as a strict Baptist. At age four, she paid for his piano lessons by collecting aluminium cans.

The lessons were money well spent, for Franklin was a natural musician who could sight-read and play by ear with equal facility. At age 11, he was leading the Mt.

Rose Baptist Church adult choir near Dallas. Despite, or because of his church background, Franklin began rebelling in his teens and getting into trouble until one of his friends was accidentally shot and killed at age 15.

Realising that he had chosen a bad road, Franklin returned to the fold and began composing songs, recording, and conducting. Since 1991, he has been backed up by his 17-member choir, the Family, a group comprising friends and associates from his younger days.

Support from his pastor, his wife Tammy, whom he married in early 1996, and the two children they brought to the marriage help keep Franklin close to his religious core, and he returned in 1998 with Nu Nation Project. The album topped the Billboard Top 200 charts (peaking at number seven) and remained on the Billboard Gospel Albums chart for 49 weeks, paving way for Franklin's third Grammy (Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album).

Franklin worked on the soundtrack of the movie Kingdom Come and his other albums are 2002's The Rebirth of Kirk Franklin, Hero (2005) and Songs for the Storm, Vol. 1 (2006). He openly admitted to being addicted to pornography on the Oprah Winfrey Show and Ebony magazine in 2006.