5 Video Clips from a Ugandan

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Hi, my name is Darlyne and I am an artist and a fan of art from Kampala, Uganda. As a core member of the Nyege Nyege collective, I share here a snippet of what inspires me as a photographer, DJ, music producer, and installation artist. You’ll see the city I live in and come from that is a huge part of my inspiration. You’ll see the music and visuals I grew up listening to at my parent's parties. You’ll see diverse cultures represented in this tiny country that is a big part of why Uganda is the way it is. You’ll see a tiny bit of our diaspora. And finally, you’ll see some videos from my Nyege Nyege family.

Artist: A Pass, Rouge, Fik Fameica feat. DJ Maphorisa
Track: «Midnight Drum» (Uganda, 2018)

With some stunning shots of Kampala’s main taxi park at night, this collaboration between Ugandan and South African artists is a great visual slice of the vibe of this city that doesn’t sleep (pre-covid). With a 9pm curfew that has been in effect since the beginning of the pandemic, this video plays like a time capsule and also a fervent hope that the party-after-party is in our future, too.

Artist: Peacock
Track: «Splash» (South Africa, 1980s)

Uganda is a multicultural, ethnically diverse nation and one of the most welcoming places for refugees. I say this to underscore the range of musical influences present here. Growing up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, all sorts of genres, including Congolese Lingala, Gabonese Rumba, Ghanaian Hi-Life, and South African Kwaito made it to our airwaves. Peacock is a peak example of this time for me, with its wonderful green screen video and gentle sway dancing.

Artist: Otim Alpha
Track: «Tong Gweno» (Uganda, 2019)

Otim Alpha, a legend in Northern Ugandan music, takes us on a glorious tour of his hometown, Gulu, where you can clearly see how much he is loved and celebrated. From the market to the street, keep an eye on people's faces as they react with unadulterated joy wherever Otim goes. The music, sung in his native Acholi language, is infectious (as it should be, since Otim makes a lot of traditional Acholi wedding music) and is sure to get you dancing, too.

Artist: AWORI X TWANI
Video: «Ranavalona» (France, 2021)

Uganda has always had a thriving musical diaspora. From Philly Bongole Lutaaya in the 1980s in Sweden to Maddox Ssematimba in the 1990s, also in Sweden. My own personal diasporic obsession has been AWORI x TWANI’s new album, Ranavalona. Switzerland-based Awori is the Ugandan who you see take center stage in this vibrant and colorful video for the title track of the album. I heartily recommend you to give the whole album a listen.

Artist: Kadilida
Video: «Song Mzuka» (Tanzania, 2019)

Singeli is a moment, a mood, a movement. From the ghettos of Dar Es Salaam comes this driving, unrelenting, insistent call to dance that grabs you on first listen, and does not release your body until the last abrupt note. Kadilida teams up with Sisso Studio’s Jay Mitta for this one, but you should definitely find and listen to the whole Singeli discography on the Kampala based label, Nyege Nyege Tapes.

Biography

Darlyne Komukama is a Ugandan self-taught photographer and multimedia artist. They work mostly collaboratively to investigate and edify the things they care about: femininity, Blackness, and connectedness. Their feminist ideals are vital to her projects. Their photographs are full of regal, statuesque Black women, color, and a call back to the natural world. Their work has appeared on CNN and the BBC, as well as in The Guardian, Quartz and OkayAfrica, and has been shown at the Southbank Centre in London as part of the Africa Utopia Festival, Constitution Hill in Johannesburg as part of the Being Her(e) Exhibition, the Chale Wote Festival in Jamestown in Accra, the Africa Bass Cultural festival in Ouagadougou, and at multiple locations in Kampala, Uganda.

Published on August 09, 2021

Last updated on August 18, 2021

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5 Video Clips from La Réunion

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by Jako Maron

I compiled five music videos from Réunion Island. They combine the main topics that I explore in my own music, which is mainly influenced by electro maloya. These maloya music videos are at the hinterland of spiritualism, where tradition and modernism meet. They are the expression of the islanders’ worlds; the physical and the spiritual.

Music: Dance Company Soul City / Didier Boutiana
Track: «Héva» (2018)

Didier Boutiana is a choreographer and talented dancer from Réunion Island. In this short clip you can hear the Muezzin, the Muslim call to prayer, overlayed with the whisper of a poem by Francky Lauret «Mazigador». Mazigador talks about spells and spirits and our attachment to the land. This is the spirit of Réunion Island, a place where many religions (Christian, Hindu, Muslim) peacefully co-exist.

Music: Jérémy Labelle (feat. Boogie & Hlasko)
Video: Pixeldealer
Track: «Lait Sacré» (2014)

«Lait Sacré» is yet another facet of the spiritual Réunion proposed here by Jeremy Labelle. Beyond religions, there is the cosmic dimension of Réunion Island, a land circled by the ocean waves and volcanic lava flow. A new generation of musicians, poets, and artists feel and perceive these forces and try by their own means and sensibilities to express them. It reveals a syncretism, a reinvention, and an awareness of an ever-evolving mythology.

Music: Kaloune
Video: Pixeldealer
Track: «Funkyman Dombolo» (2018)

Kaloune is a musician, singer, poet, storyteller, and author with an undeniable scenic presence. She represents the pride and the power of Black women, while expressing a kind of dreamy fairy mythical goddess aura. In this clip, she honors the vivid spirit of the young women of Réunion Island and their unquenchable thirst for invention and reinvention.

Music: Loya
Video: Clément Vincent
Track: «Malbar Dance» (2016)

People of Indian origin, and the Hindu religion in general, play a significant role in the culture of Réunion Island. The land is dotted with Indian temples, from the modest temples in private homes to the outstanding architectural and artistic community temples. This song is dedicated to the musician’s Tamil ancestors. The clip depicts Tamil priests celebrating a ceremony in honor of the Goddess Kali, the Hindu Goddess who eats demons, re-enacting the circle of life from birth to destruction to rebirth.

Music: Jako Maron
Video: Kid Kreol & Boogie
Track : «Sitarane larivé» (2011)

Sitarane was an infamous leader of a band of assassins, who, in the 1900s blew a magical powder through the doors of houses to drug people. The unsuspecting victims were assassinated in their sleep, their belongings stolen. Sitarane was eventually caught, brought to trial, condemned, and executed in 1911. He has been worshiped since then, interceding, it is said, the devil on people’s behalf, throwing spells of black magic on rivals or enemies. People leave smoking cigarettes, rum, and money on his tombstone; these offerings are a dark occult ritual invoking the spirit world. The ever-popular singer Michel Admet sings an even more famous song about Sitarane in Séga, a folkloric festive musical tradition, which is now propelled into the 21^stcentury in this Sitarane larivé electro remix by Jako Maron.

Biography

Jako Maron is an electronic music artist from Réunion island. His music style is influenced by electro maloya. Maloya is the traditional music of Réunion island. It came from African slaves and Indian workers. In addition to his own productions for the Nyege Nyege tapes label and Sakifo production label, Jako Maron composes and makes sound design too for theater play, movies, and art exhibitions. Follow him on Youtube, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, or Bandcamp.

Links

Jako Maron DJ set Boiler Room

Published on August 24, 2021

Last updated on May 07, 2024

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5 Music Video Clips from the GDR – Part 2: Underground Bands

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by Natalie Gravenor

With the GDR’s almost year-long demise in 1989/90, the official mediascape became open to music videos by bands which, a few years prior, would have enjoyed only limited visibility, or rather audibility (primarily via the GDR radio’s indie music show and illegal or semi-legal gigs). These five music-based shorts explore the possibilities of marrying sound and vision and are artefacts of the transition period.

Artist: AG. Geige
Track: «Zeychen & Wunder» (GDR, 1989)
Dir: AG. Geige

A leading light of the electronic tape music scene in Karl-Marx-Stadt (the 1953–1990 name of Saxonian city Chemnitz), AG. Geige took pages from the gesamtkunstwerk playbooks of Western counterparts such as The Residents and Der Plan by integrating absurdly humorous costumes and visuals (on 8mm and 16mm) into their performances. The band cultivated a respectable audience, despite eschewing application for a public performance permit – unusually lenient local cultural authorities allowed them to play anyway, and the punk/new wave show Parocktikum on state youth radio DT-64 featured AG. Geige regularly. In «Zeychen & Wunder» (translatable as «signs and wonders»), various communist, capitalist, and religious symbols flash, intercut with performance footage.

Artist: Electric B
Track: «In My Neighborhood» (GDR, 1990)
Dir: Gabor Steisinger

This short’s director, Gabor Steisinger, worked at the DEFA Studio’s animation unit in Dresden and was part of that citys hip hop scene. «In My Neighborhood», featuring hip hop by Electric B, combines reportage about life in the hood with graffiti-inspired animation.

Artist: Herbst in Peking
Track: «Movie Stops Tomorrow» (GDR 1990)
Dir: Petra Tschörtner

The indie rock (later more dub, psychedelic, and electronic) Herbst in Peking was originally named after a Boris Vian novel (Autumn in Peking), but fell afoul with authorities in the aftermath of the June 1989 crackdown against Chinese pro-democracy protesters, when at a concert, singer Rex Joswig called for a moment of silence to honor the victims. HiP (the band’s ironic acronym) dropped the anthemic «Bakschischrepublik» in mid-1989, decrying the GDR’s decrepit gerontocracy. However, that song’s most widely available music video-like rendition is an April 1990 performance on Elf 99, with haphazardly hung portraits of Erich Honecker, who by then was long gone, as was the Socialist Unity Party (the first free elections in March brought the conservative Christian Democrats into power, forming the last GDR government before accession to West Germany).

More interesting is this vignette in Berlin: Prenzlauer Berg, Petra Tschörtner’s definitive documentary about East Berlin alternative culture in the temporary autonomous zone between the Fall of the Wall and the introduction of West German currency. The music video-like segment sees the band performing a rare English-language song (a comment about conforming to a newly privatized, globalized music market?) near the former border strip. The sequence ends with footage of protests against rampant capitalism and neo-fascism, which many progressives feared reunification would yield.

Artist: Sandow
Track: «Invasion» (GDR, 1989)
Dir: Monika Groth

Sandow from Cottbus, southeast of Berlin, were barely out of their teens when they dropped «Born in the GDR», for which the 1988 East Berlin concert of you-know-who was less the inspiration than the perceived hypocrisy of the authorities who had invited the Boss to curry favor with East German youth. Too little, too late – members of Sandow and many contemporaries had already mentally (and physically) checked out.

Made in the transition year 1989, «Invasion» is likely the band’s first «proper» music video. While it sometimes falls prey to MTV-style excesses of surrealism for its own sake, «Invasion» manages to create moments of genuine dread, not to mention the appearance of masks two decades before the Anonymous and Occupy movements.

Artist: Feeling B
Track: «Langeweile» (GDR, 1980s/2007)

Feeling B were pillars of the East Berlin underground. Singer Aljoscha Rompe also milked the privileges of a Swiss passport (from his biological father) and his mother’s and stepfather’s party connections. Feeling B and Rompe in particular supported the 1980s East Berlin punk and post punk scenes, which he found more creative than what he was able to witness on the other side of the Wall. The anarchic, cheerfully hedonistic and prankishly non-conformist band was eventually granted an amateur public performance permit. In 1988 they released tracks on state label Amiga and in 1990 a debut album followed, after a year of red tape. Rompe revved up his political activism in 1989/90, championing a more democratic GDR as well as squatting, pirate radio, and communal living. Feeling B split in 1993, with Rompe exploring «medieval» indie rock and remaining politically active (until his death in 2000), while other members formed Rammstein.

This music video (song title means «boredom»), featuring solely lo-fi 1980s and 1990s footage of the band, accompanied the 2007 CD Grün & Blau with previously unreleased 1980s recordings alongside well-known songs.

Biography

Natalie Gravenor is a Berlin-based festival organizer (Soundwatch Music Film Festival), curator, and cultural worker. Her focus topics are music and audiovisual media, urban development, and underground and experimental film in Central and Eastern Europe. Follow her on LinkedIn.