For the collective behind the festival, supporting artistic expression extends beyond the annual event. Nyege Nyege also runs a record label, booking agency and music studio to help fledgling local musicians find success both in Uganda and globally. In a country where there are few opportunities for aspiring artists, particularly those operating outside of mainstream tastes, its work has had enormous impact.
The collective calls its home base “the villa.” It’s a two-story brick building flanked by avocado and jackfruit trees in the quiet Kampala neighborhood of Bunga. A week before the festival, the austere electronic beats of South African gqom music drifted from the building’s balcony, and a sleepy pack of street dogs barely raised an eyelid as a steady stream of musicians came in and out of the gate.
A tour of the space took in a recording studio festooned with colorful kitenge fabrics, bedrooms for musicians on paid residencies and a balcony with overflowing ashtrays where the musicians hang out in the evening. Their socializing often leads to artistic collaboration.
The collective first took shape when Dilsizian, who was raised in Greece and has Lebanese-Armenian heritage, met Derek Debru, 41, who is Belgian with mixed European heritage and a grandmother from Burundi. Working in a film school in Kampala, the pair became fascinated by the diversity of music in Uganda, a country that is small by African standards but has over 50 tribal groups, many with their own languages and associated musical traditions.
Dilsizian and Debru started organizing club nights in 2014, and they were among the first promoters creating opportunities for noncommercial musicians in Kampala. “They brought a lot of attention to the East African music scene,” said Lynda Lillian Kansiime, a local event promoter. “A lot of these artists started from the ghettos with few opportunities and most of them had not been previously heard.”
The label Nyege Nyege Tapes started releasing music in 2016, identifying resonances between contemporary East African music and experimental European club sounds, which struck a chord with electronic music tastemakers. Nyege Nyege rejected the mainstream, Western music industry’s presentation of “African music,” which tends to neatly divide into sleek modern pop or more traditional sounds relegated to the “world music” section.
