Uganda: A Musician's Take On Jazz

Uganda: A Musician's Take On Jazz

The Weekly Observer (Kampala)

OPINION
22 October 2008
Posted to the web 23 October 2008

Tshaka Mayanja

Jazz is receiving a lot of time and space in both the print and electronic media in Uganda these days. This is a good thing if only that the stories were accurate. Although the saying goes that all publicity is good publicity I believe jazz has been marketed so badly in Uganda, so much so that it is being described as music for the expatriates, wannabes, show offs and the filthy rich. And it is quite far from the truth!

It only appears that way because the jazz events that have happened so far are priced so highly, that some real jazz fans cannot afford to attend. In the end, it's those that can afford to attend that do, and almost always they have no clue what's going on. Jazz has become a social event!

Jazz started in the 'Jook joints', shibeams and dark cheap bars where cheap and deadly booze like Moonshine was sold. The poor black people in America could not afford the expensive/posh high society places so out of the Blue; they created new music called jazz, where improvisation and skill were paramount. Isn't it ironic that this poor man's music is being marketed or wrongly tagged as the Elite's music?

What is jazz?

Let's first put this out of the way; Not every song that has no words/lyrics is jazz (do not forget, there is such a thing as Vocal Jazz - Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Louis Armstrong, Carmen McCrae etc).

For some reason, whenever an artist plays an instrument, most especially a horn, people call it jazz. Kenny G is the most successful instrumentalist of all time (going by sales), but he is not a recording jazz artist and he's never claimed to be one. Isaiah Katumwa is in the same mould, and in all fairness, he mentions KennyG as a mentor.

It is very impressive and commendable what Warid Telecom and others have done by starting or planting the seed for jazz festivals in Uganda. It would have been even better if what is being marketed as 'The First Jazz Festival' in Uganda had at least, 98% jazz musicians on the bill.

The Kampala Warid Jazz Festival only had two bonafide Jazz musicians/group, out of a whopping ten advertised artistes! That's only 2% of the artistes performing at the entire festival.

By bonafide, I mean those musicians who have both recorded and published jazz music, or those who make a living playing jazz.

The organisers went on to use talented artiste Joel Sebunjo (Sundiata) to do a jazz tour in Ugandan bars so as to promote The Jazz Festival no less! Does Sundiata play jazz? He's an Afro/World musician.

The event should have been called 'The Kampala World Music Festival'. That would have encompassed all the artistes that were advertised, including the minority advertised who actually play jazz.

The problem with naming such an event as a jazz festival where jazz purveyors are the minority and giving it such mainstream publicity is that those who do not know jazz will then start misplacing various artistes into various genres where they do not belong; calling other genres jazz!

The interest of big Ugandan companies sponsoring jazz in Uganda has brought the genre into the mainstream. That is not a bad thing if it is actually what is being marketed. The problem with mass media and promotion getting involved in such a complex genre is that they end up misinforming the general public due to their lack of research or even interest in the genre.

The definition

There is nothing like a quarter, an eighth, two thirds or half jazz! It's either jazz or it isn't. Jazz is probably the genre with the most sub-genres in it. There are various sub-genres within jazz, but, and this is very important; all these sub-genres have some things in common: Improvisation, Jazz scales and notes, Jazz chords and Jazz movement. The only thing where these sub-genres differ is usually rhythm and place of origin.

The sub-genres

We have Traditional Jazz, Bebop (believed to be one of the hardest sub-genres of Jazz to play), Big Band (this involves an Orchestra), Fusion Jazz (with elements of heavy Rock music), Progressive Jazz (very abstract and almost always played by Instrument virtuosos), Smooth Jazz (has a lot of elements from Soul & R 'n' B music), Nu-Jazz (with lots of elements of Funk music, with an emphasis on Groove), South African Jazz (a mixture of Traditional South African music and Traditional American Jazz), Afro Cuban Jazz ( a fusion of Traditional American Jazz and Traditional Afro Cuban music; the creation here is credited to Dizzy Gillespie [R.I.P] and Tito Puente [R.I.P] ), Bossa Nova (a fusion of Traditional American Jazz and Brazilian music - think of Stan Getz's Girl from Ipanema) and others that we shall list subsequently.

The way forward

Let us first agree on what constitutes Jazz music, before we market it to the public as such. Let us make the masses appreciate the genre as it is, without resorting to calling it what it isn't. Jazz is strong enough and solid enough to be appreciated. Jazz music was once mainstream music the world over, played at dances and parties. Indeed when the great Louis Armstrong toured Uganda in the Sixties, the show was in Nakivubo Stadium! We may not see that happen to Jazz in our lifetime, but we're sure going to try to make people appreciate this music by pricing it right and calling it what it actually is!

TShaka Mayanja is a Nu Jazz/Funk/Reggae musician