Weeza: The Ugandan jazz fusion track blending flamenco, rhumba and afro-pop

We are looking at Uganda’s take on jazz as a genre in commemoration of International Jazz Day, which is on April 30. 

We have the purists, of course and each of the artistes I am looking at this week would sound comfortable taking down a solo at a jazz festival in New Orleans. But we like to put our own spin on things, give different genres our own African, or even Ugandan flavor.

I think that is what I like most about this single from Masho, a guitarist who has a decidedly flamenco feel to his touch. Weeza is the name of the single, and it really is such a pretty melody, definitive from verse to hook.

The song has a gorgeous big band feel to it which still lets the acoustic guitar lead stand out. You can hear multiple cultural influences on this track – the Kinyarwanda feel to the melody, the Congolese lilt to the guitar, the rhumba feel to the percussion, and Afro – pop styling that is definitive of the Ugandan music scene.

This is a rich, rhythmic and yet considered but of music, one that is simultaneously simple and straightforward. You have to love how direct this track is, how it finishes its business with the verse and heads off to the hook like it has an important meeting with a gorgeous girl.

Rich melodies are a now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t, aspect of jazz music and they will usually show up on fusion iterations like Weeza.

You are more like to come across them when there is a fusion of sorts going on, like there is on Weeza, where there is a co-existence of multiple musical influences trying to interpret a genre, the genre in question being jazz.

It is because of this that the song seems so multifaceted. If ‘easy listening’ was a technical term, it would qualify as a description for the song. You could, as the same time, use this song to make a percussive dance presentation. Now how often does that sort of thing happen?

A long time ago, Weeza would fit perfectly into a genre of music that was once called World Music. The world moved on from this term (the world has a habit of doing that) so we can simply refer to it as an iteration of jazz, because that is what it is. Beautiful, unusual song, I give you Weeza.