70 TheEconomistMarch 21st 2020
1N
ight is fallingwhen Full Figure gets
back to her office in a poor quarter of
Kampala, the Ugandan capital. The singer,
wearing a baseball cap and psychedelic
“My Little Pony” t-shirt, is returning from
State House, the country’s seat of power. As
an unofficial adviser on “ghetto issues”, she
explains, she uses her “big voice” to con-
nect the president, Yoweri Museveni, to the
people. Mostly that seems to mean organis-
ing state handouts for local youngsters,
such as the welders raising sparks on the
streets below.
Ugandan musicians have played poli-
tics since the days when court troupes ser-
enaded kings. Now the young, fast-grow-
ing cities are dancing to a new beat. A pop
star-turned-mpcalled Bobi Wine is proba-
bly the opposition’s most popular candi-
date in next year’s presidential election
(like other artistes in this story, he is best
known by his stage name). Stars who sup-
port him are angling for parliamentary
seats; others act as praise singers for Mr
Museveni, whose strongman rule has so far
lasted 34 years. The race for the ghetto’s
votes runs through the recording studio.The “big three” in Uganda’s home-
grown music industry are Mr Wine (pic-
tured) and his two rivals, Jose Chameleone
and Bebe Cool. When they first appeared on
the scene in the early 2000s the airwaves
were filled by Congolese bands, local bal-
ladeers and Western pop. The trio brought a
“fresh sound”, says Douglas Lwanga, a tele-
vision presenter, mixing Jamaican influ-
ences with a home-grown vibe. They bat-
tled in lyrics and brawled in nightclubs. “It
was about proving to each other who was
bigger and better,” recalls Mr Chameleone,
swigging whisky backstage in Kampala.
Mr Wine once sang that “there’s more
politics in the music industry than in the
parliament”. Not that, for him and his
peers, conventional politics was ever faraway. Mr Cool is a former cabinet minis-
ter’s son. He performed at rallies of the Na-
tional Resistance Movement (nrm), the
ruling party; politics, he says, was “my
fate”. One of Mr Wine’s brothers, himself a
musician and producer, twice ran for par-
liament. Another was a council chairman
in the slum where he was brought up.
His own political awakening came in
2007, when Kampala hosted a meeting of
Commonwealth leaders. In preparation,
the authorities demolished makeshift
dwellings and shut down roadside stalls,
including some owned by Mr Wine. “On the
day the queen comes the poor man is dis-
placed,” he sang. Soon he was styling him-
self as president of the “Ghetto Republic of
Uganja”, with a cabinet of dreadlocked
ministers. Mr Cool sang for “the uptown
boys”, says Mr Wine, but his own songs
were “a representation of a ragtag society”.Beatbox and ballot box
This was a society that Mr Museveni knew
little about. The son of a cattle-herder, he
came to power through a rural insurgency;
his personal taste was for hymns, army
tunes and the Nashville crooner Jim
Reeves. But he had an ear for the demotic.
He once got down with the bazukulu
(grandchildren) by rapping a folk song. At
the elections in 2016, Mr Museveni backed
a ragga singer as the nrm’s candidate for
mayor of Kampala; he enlisted musi-
cians—including Mr Chameleone and Mr
Cool—to record a sycophantic anthem for
his own campaign.Music and politicsGhetto blasters
KAMPALA
Uganda’s pop stars are enlivening political campaigns—and launching themBooks & arts
71 A biographyofMBS
72 ShakespeareinAmerica
72 “Lolita”,revisited
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