When waltz was the dance….Where has true music gone? Time was when a sweet melody wafted smoothly and soothingly through the air and into your ears to create an ‘ear-worm’ that would be in your whole system for weeks. Let me explain this ‘ear-worm’. For instance, a BBC programme jingle interrupts your agonized dreams about the insufficiency of your meagre earnings, at 5.30 AM.: “Wake up, wake up! This is Network Africa…” That jingle will keep ringing in your head and you will find yourself humming it the whole day. That, I am told, is called an ‘ear-worm’. In the early fifties, we depended on the daily doze of the herdsman for our musical nourishment. Whenever evening fell, everybody would sit in front of their houses so as to listen to their music maestro uninterrupted. As the herdsman brought his herd of cattle home, he brought out his well-worn flute, umwironge, and treat us to his sweet melody. By the time he concluded his entertainment, on arrival home, everybody would be ready to go to bed, and hum the tune the whole night. When it came to dancing, this New Cadillac dancing hall in Kigali has never boasted such an attendance. At such occasions as wedding ceremonies, the celebrity entertainer was usually the legendary bard of Rwanda, Sebatunzi himself. On less glorious occasions, there were many other less talented singers who entertained us with their melodies to the accompaniment of different versatile instruments like ikembe (no translation!) and iningiri (violin?). Within a short time, however, we had been forced to embrace a radically new kind of music. This and the fact that the history of our country seemed to be in the hands of the devil, and we found ourselves in exile, meant that we no longer had any organized group of entertainers. Those who had the means listened to radios, and those who did not have the means had to pay homage, in evening visits, to this new class of nouveaux riches. Fortunately, Radio Ruanda-Urundi and Voice of Kenya hardly had any news to report and played music most of the time. We were introduced to ‘modern’ music of the great Congolese musician, Bosco wa Bayeke, on Voice of Kenya. These and a mushrooming crop of young musicians from Bunyole in Kenya kept us in touch with music throughout the early 1960s. By mid-1960 we had learnt some ‘approximation’ of the English language, like a certain former president, and could listen to the greats of musical history: Jim Reeves, Louis Armstrong, Skitter Davis, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Michael Jackson and others. At about this time, too, a revolution had taken place on the music scene with the arrival of the gramophone! This was something that looked like a cross between a kitchen cabinet and a refrigerator on spindly, pointed legs. It had a lid which when lifted revealed an arm that had a head with a needle in it. When you placed a disc in the middle and the needle on the disc, you could listen to two of your favourite records. To listen to twelve records, you placed there what was called an album. The gramophone was a treasured preserve of the extremely rich, and so it took pride of place in the sitting rooms of the proud owners. Behind it were usually placed two car batteries that powered it. However, the mother of all revolutions came in the form of what was known as a jukebox. The jukebox brought independence that was totally unknown to us because it was placed in public places, like bars and nightclubs. All you needed was to steal a coin, walk into any bar that was blessed with electricity, insert the coin into the giant box and you could select any of your favourite songs. Alternatively, you could ‘poach’ on the music paid for by the bar patrons simply by sitting outside the bar. For obvious reasons, the compounds of these bars became the favoured venues for many a wedding, and most times we attended the weddings without the least interest in knowing the happy couple! From there, we became champions of what was known as ‘ballroom dancing’, which has nothing to do with today’s dancing that looks rather like controlled madness. There were thus champions of rock-n-roll, waltz and their African version, rumba. Our tastes in music had by then acquired an international flavour, and we listened and danced to music in other languages by mega stars like Adamo, Mouskouri, Rochereau, Franco, Morogoro Jazz Band and umpteen others. Come a dancing weekend and the champions could not miss the event even if it meant covering tens of kilometres on foot! On Friday you could see a battalion of youths in Indian file traversing the ridges of Southern Uganda to trek the 50 kilometres to Nakivale, just to dance. When music started to take other forms like calypso, reggae or rap, and dancing became ‘electric bugalo’ or ‘ndombolo’, our champions withdrew into cocoons. When you talk about music these days, they curse quietly under their breath and quickly change the topic. ingina2@yahoo.co.uk
