When Creativity Meets Chaos

This episode offers insight into the uncompressed music scene in Kampala, Uganda. It looks into the evolution of (underground) club culture and shows how house parties contributed so much to create the roots of feeling safe and a support system in the music community. It further discusses the importance of the Nyege Nyege label and festival that has gained massive international attention lately. Producer’s Note Many thriving DJs and producers have come out of Kampala’s underground music scene in the past few years. In this podcast episode, we invite our fellow music producers and DJs to share their processes of music production and explain how the city inspires their creativity. Kampala is a beautiful city surrounded by Lake Victoria and its nature that brings a certain level of peace amidst chaos. We recorded the podcast in the city, relating to the sounds in our surroundings, and how each of the artists connect to different aspects of the city, such as noise, the people, and its environment. Uganda is a socially conservative, majority Christian and Muslim country. To see the momentum of artists expressing themselves in a free create form is very impressive. We look into the growth of Kampala in the past decade. There’s a lot more light on the music scene now than before. The momentum comes from the multiple cultures that bring along unique sounds that evolve in this creativity space, and there’s a lot of room to be inspired and learn. Over the years, Kampala has become a global incubator of sounds. We see artists from the diaspora and East African community gaining interest in exploring the city and doing residencies at Nyege Nyege studios (Villa) which has harbored collaborations among artists. It’s such a beautiful opportunity to bring you into our evolving music scene in East Africa. We hope you enjoy it.