Music Review: Myko Ouma’s “Aluru” proves why he’s Uganda’s guitar virtuoso

Myko Ouma is comfortably the finest guitarist in the land.

Give me a second to have a look around…Oh yeah, I reiterate that statement. He annoyingly is pretty proficient with other instruments. He also plays the piano, the thumb piano, the xylophone, the bass guitar, but it is on the guitar, whether acoustic or otherwise that he is clinical.  

 
Aluru is taken off his first album which was released back in 2014. The album was self – titled, and was an impressive body of work. Aluru stands out for me because of several things. The song’s melody is derived from a lullaby, of all things. At the time of production, Myko’s name was scorching its way through households because of his prowess on the electric guitar but it’s always been on the acoustic where I find him otherworldly.

Aluru combines both instruments, with the acoustic layering the bed against which the electric solos. I found this combination intriguing, and probably one of the few items I have heard a marriage between these two instruments work well. The electric guitar runs through a pedal before joining the main feed, giving it a distinct, rounded solo feed, while the acoustic guitar gives you the sort of musical bed that can only be produced by a finely talented musician working his way through one of the world’s most influential instruments.

I classify this song as a form of folk jazz and it is because if this that we are reviewing it.  

The song incorporates additional instruments including the tube fiddle (which has a wonderfully haunting sound) and the traditional flute, which is equally as beautiful.
 

 
The song’s hook is a harmony of voices singing the word “Aluru”. Myko is Samia, but if my notes are accurate, his mother is Acholi, and we learn our lullabies in the language of our mothers. Aluru a pure Luo word that means ‘quail’, a bird that is a delicacy among the Luo.

The improvisation that he works his way through on the second verse of this pearl of a song underlines my decision to qualify this within the folk jazz category. The production on this album was executed by Samuel Bisaso, a producer who is also embarrassingly talented. That is Bisaso you hear on the bass guitar and on the keyboard. He might be the most subtle musician I know.

Folk jazz music simply borrows some things from jazz, like the improvisation and soloing while retaining it distinctive roots, and this song pulls that off. Aluru reminds me of some of Oliver Mutukuzi’s best work and is probably one of the most complete original pieces of music we have as an industry.