The Senator Extravaganza as a Marketing Project

Abstract

Curled up on the grass, draped with leafy garlands, young men and women are sprouting like seeds, their movements flickering in the shadows of a string of generator-powered light bulbs. Now their arms are outstretched, hands shivering like new leaves in a stop-motion film. Other dancers, in red-yellow-black flag-striped uniforms, move from one seedling to the next, harvesting the leaves from their heads. The crowd presses in on all sides, receding into the pitch-dark of the rural Ugandan night. A rich cloud of instrumental timbres suffuses the outdoor arena: the metallic buzz of lamellophones, wooden clock of a xylophone, reed hoot of panpipes, sawing of tube fiddles, and, through it all, the piercing tone of an end-blown flute cut from a length of PVC pipe. Now, the dancers change roles: harvested rice and barley are being carted to the factory in a truck made of dancers—a woman driver on a chassis of crouching men making wheel motions. They are going to the factory to make Senator Extra Lager, East Africa Breweries Ltd.’s (EABL’s) “Beer with the Taste of Our Land.” The dancers mime an assembly line—bottles filled and tossed from station to station. A chant is taken up: “We go, we go, we go. We want Senator!” And out of nowhere “Senator” appears—a giant papier-mâché beer-bottle masquerade, lumbering toward the audience, waving and swaying with the chant.