Abstract
Many of the performing groups in the Senator Extravaganza were self-described “women’s development” groups. One cannot travel far in Uganda without encountering one of these local women’s associations, whose members convene to assist one another financially, make crafts for sale, socialize, welcome visiting politicians, and lead NGO-sponsored development workshops. They are the organizations one thinks of first when picturing civil society in the country today. By engaging women’s development groups, East African Breweries Ltd. (EABL) was not just recruiting free labor, but also positively associating its brand with a contemporary Ugandan imaginary of grassroots development.
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Notes
Marius Schneider’s pioneering studies of variable leader-and-chorus relationships in African music helped attune ethnomusicologists to call and response as a socially significant rhythmic parameter (Marius Schneider, “Über die Verbreitund afrikanischer Chorformen.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 69 (1937): 78–88).
Some of the explicit and implicit rules of this melodic system have been worked out by Gerhard Kubik, Theory of African Music, Volume 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010b). In my own xylophone lessons, I learned, for example, that repeating the same note too many times in succession results in a pattern that expert Basoga musicians do not consider well formed. Once the instrumentalists have settled into workable patterns, they turn to improvising variations, in collaboration with their fellow instrumentalists, always with the song in mind.
Improvisation is valued in Kisoga traditional MDD, not least because it further distinguishes Kisoga from Kiganda tradition which gives less license to improvise, in keeping with the latter ethnicity’s reputation for reserve and stately formality (cf., Gerhard Kubik, “Embaire Xylophone Music of Samusiri Babalanda (Uganda 1968).” World of Music 34, no. 1 (1992): 77).
Interlocking performance by ensembles of end-blown flutes is found from Ethiopia to South Africa. The Venda of South Africa are known for interlocking on sets of panpipes (Andrew Tracey, “The Nyanga Panpipe Dance.” African Music 5, no. 1 (1971): 73–89).
Kubik has theorized that the existence of this roughly “equidistant” pentatonic scale likely has to do with the deep historical preference for xylophones in this region. Xylophones, which can be tuned only roughly, do not lend themselves to aural explorations of the harmonic series—as do, for example, musical bows. Without a culturally ingrained strong sensitivity to the harmonic series, such as is found in other parts of Africa, southern Ugandan musicians had little incentive to seek out, in their tunings, pure intervals from the upper reaches of that series, such as major and minor thirds, and major seconds (Gerhard Kubik, Theory of African Music, Volume 1 [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010a]).
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© 2015 David G. Pier
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Pier, D.G. (2015). Women’s Groups and Their Politics of Musical Promotion. In: Ugandan Music in the Marketing Era. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137546975_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137546975_5
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