The East African carnival

Apr 22, 2014

Easter was here. And again, Bebe cool invited (or pretended to have invited) a horde of east African artists to his father’s recreation centre in Kiwatule in what he dubbed the East African carnival on Easter Monday.

By Solomon Muleyi
 
Easter was here. And again, Bebe Cool invited (or pretended to have invited) a horde of east African artists to his father’s recreation centre in Kiwatule in what he dubbed the East African carnival on Easter Monday. 
 
Being an all-day event, revellers started entering as early as 11:00pm in the morning till around 6:00pm when they actually started flooding. 
 
Though hyped up by Omulangira Ndausi, whose voice apparently evokes the biggest hype in musical adverts made on Uganda’s musical arena, the turn up was measly for the name they chose to call the concert. 
 
I mean, you don’t call East African artists and the hindmost two or so quarters are empty! 
 
It is supposed to be full to the brim. Shouldn’t people be flocking in till the last performer?  Just wondering!
 
Anyways, the show started at 6:00pm when DJ Michel hopped onto stage to remind the audience that he once had hits like “Nenonya” “wolokoso” among others. 
 
He was a good curtain raiser. Supposedly drawing people who were scattered all over the gardens of the recreation centre closer to the stage and he did it well because they left the cuddling, swimming and those other things couples do when left alone in a happening place like that one. 
 
Aziz Azion then performed to a now happy and bigger crowd. He is a good one this chap. 
 
In a robust and rich voice, he took the crowd through their favourites like “painkiller”, “beera nange” and “beautiful”. 
 
It was the ultimate call for mirth. The crowd sung along to all of his songs and he engaged them pretty amazingly. He even thanked them for loving a person like him who is broke and can’t speak English. 
 
Sadly for them however, (the now happy crowd that is) they had to go through an excruciating three hours of whacky music from a horde of upcoming musicians who were probably selectively picked because they had the worst music in Uganda. 
 
Their role at this concert was to kill time as the expected artists arrived.
 
Maybe, Shamim Namawa, a young and very energetic dancer who is not exactly good at singing tried to revive their spirits but she was brought mid-way through-the string of aspiring ghetto boys jumping around the stage presumably excited by performing on a stage magnificently lit by silk events-so they went back to slumber mode. 
 
The slumber mode being, throwing bottles at the artists and hurling wild profanities at the upcoming artists like the archetypal Bebe-cool fans that they are. 100% Bebe-cool behaviour just! 
 
The rebirth happened when Big eye came onto stage and did “olweedy bookuti” (an attempt at saying already booked and yes it’s a song) and physically fit. 
 
Mun-g then came onto stage to excite the revellers the more before Eddie Kenzo came onto stage to send the crowd crazy even before he said a word. 
 
He performed and stopped midway through all of his songs before doing the biggest banger on Ugandan soil “sitya loss”. 
He also had backup from Tip swizy who, apart from being a creative musician is also a good dancer. 
 
Then Tool-man, Khalifa Aganaga, Peter miles and Menshan, Chagga among others performed before Bebe cool stepped onto stage at exactly midnight.  
 
He performed on a live band and like the proud owner of the word “arrogance”, he always took time off the performing road to remind the crowd that the band playing was called the Gagamel band and that it was his. 
 
His only and no one else’s but him, the biggest artist in Uganda. He did that all the time till 1:00am when the show ended.
 

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