Second Bayimba festival brings “silence” to Kampala

By: EMMANUEL SSEJJENGO of the EAiF Staff
Published July 1, 2009

The Keiga Dance group performing at the Bayimba Festival. Photo by Emma Ssejjengo

The success of an arts festival is tested by the awe and increased appreciation amongst the people. That is at least one parameter on which the recently concluded Bayimba Music and Arts festival scored high. It introduced silent disco to Uganda, and even the Kenyans and Tanzanians who attended the festival said that they had never experienced such. That awed the ones who attended it acoustically and those who watched those who attended it from the outside.

The disco hall was improvised at the open roofed National Theatre dance floor. You were handed one of the 300 head phones at the entrance. So while you danced to some hard rock music your partner would perhaps be dancing to hip hop or lingala. Many of us were uninitiated and thought each other lunatics.

But watching all this presented the funniest moments. If silent disco becomes a regular entertainment form, thank God we shall no longer wake up with hoarse voices just for having been speaking on phone. All you have to do is take of the headphones and speak under happy deathly silence. I may be dreaming, but with this technology someone can set up a disco hall right in the office so you can have it all in one day (work and play). It is having your cake and eating it.

The festival managed to step up the appreciation of world music. It is a genre usually restricted to a small audience in Kampala and given a small stage (usually at Alliance Françoise). But with the festival, the National Theatre parking yard, draped good lighting and an almost impeccable sound, left the audience yearning for more at the end of each night. Never mind that most festival goers had no idea that this was world music, but most of them kept on wondering where these artists have been.

First, many appeared confused at the beginning. Qwela and Mileage Bands seemed like omen to these people and they stood far off. But the music became infectious with time and by the third day; people were patting shoes of the favorite artists. Even the reggae here was not the usual one experienced in Kampala. Jenkins Mukasa and the Roots Rockaz Band, whether infected by World music or something, made reggae more decent than expected. It was not all praise of “Jah”, marijuana, Jamaican patois, but more about social consciousness; hope and real love.

The festival newspaper gave us the profiles and some of the reviews of the performances. Even though most things went as planed, festival management did a disservice by straying from the program more often. Its time we took time and its management seriously. The program too had something like “book review” and performances by drama groups. Aren’t books (creative) and drama art forms in Uganda? But all that did not happen. Most of us complained less and enjoyed more.

This was an awakening of a sleeping giant. In former times, the National Theatre was really the centre of performing arts and we took so much pride in it. But currently, you are lucky to have any activity taking place here. And you are very lucky if the entertainment on offer is good enough. No wonder the festival managed to attract as many university dons as street children.

Good things pull in the crowds. And the crowds attract a lot of louts and buffoonery. Sometimes you just feel like not letting other people know about good things so that it remains exclusive.

But you cannot be that selfish, can you?

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Tags: festival, kampala, music