Katumwa: Uganda’s Kenny G
ISAIAH Katumwa has no childhood to celebrate. He would rather he skipped that stage because thinking about it makes him sad. He was not loved, or is it that he was not seen to be loved?
By Nigel Nassar
ISAIAH Katumwa has no childhood to celebrate. He would rather he skipped that stage because thinking about it makes him sad. He was not loved, or is it that he was not seen to be loved?
“I might be happy and have well-to-do friends today, but my childhood story sometimes grips me and I can’t help hurting. You wouldn’t want your child to go through it,†he says.
Even then, Katumwa believes it is his sad childhood story that made him go against all odds to become the renowned saxophonist that he is today, a talent he and his mother live off.
“Not that I am a tycoon of some sort, but with the progress I am achieving, I can be sure to give my children a much better childhood than mine,†says Katumwa, a London-based saxophonist-cum musician, now back home to perform for his Ugandan fans at Theatre La Bonita in a concert dubbed, ‘Isaiah Katumwa Live’, today at 7:00pm.
At sh25,000 for first class and 40,000 for VIP seating, revellers will be treated to a touch of specialised art, both in instruments and live singing.
Arguably East Africa’s best Jazz artiste, Katumwa was christened ‘Uganda’s Sax Wizard’ at the age of 20 for his distinguished skill.
In a nutshell, he loves his tools – not just the saxophone, but also a number of traditional instruments.
Much as all is well that ends well, the setting under which he learned to play these instruments was not the friendliest — not when, amid biting poverty, he had to stand a series of beatings as motivation to practise.
Beating up the young Katumwa was his caretaker’s idea of love — after all, his father had not bothered to take care of him. “He didn’t want anything to do with me. I don’t know why,†he says in a subdued tone.
Katumwa’s early childhood was nomadic. Even before he was a year old, he was taken from one relative’s house to another’s, until all his aunts and uncles felt they had done enough to help.
For reasons he cannot bring himself to mention, his mother was not in position to take care of him. She was a helpless single mother.
He does not blame her at all because she did her best for him.
“Dad had left because of an inside story I didn’t get to know. Mother had to hand me over, but every after a few months, my relative handed me over to another, saying they had done enough and the cycle continued,†says Katumwa.
At seven years old, Katumwa was enrolled in Makonzi Boarding Primary School in Mubende district, with the school fees his father grudgingly paid.
His mother would have to figure out where he would stay for the holidays since they did not have a home.
In his first term in P3, his father stopped paying his fees and detached himself from Katumwa and his mother.
Katumwa could have become a street kid, but he chose to join his mother in the village to dig for a year, in preparation for him to go back to school in case their crops sold at a good price.
Luckily for the desperate little boy, his mother was introduced to Washington Mugerwa, the director of Reverend John Foundation School in Kitintale, who allowed her to supply his school with food, in payment for the boy’s school fees.
Katumwa’s P3 class in the new school was under a tree where they studied, except when it rained.
“I was the brightest kid in class and also excelled in the choir, which was incorporated into the school band when Mugerwa bought one after about a year,†recalls Katumwa, who was made to skip to P6 after he passed a P5 Mathematics paper, yet he was in P4.
By P6, he had learnt to play the guitar, bugle and the trombone well.
“Mugerwa realised I was talented. So he bought a saxophone, which he asked me to try out.
Getting me to perfect playing it came with thorough beating, almost daily. He claimed it was his way of showing me love. Being the only saxophonist, I practised in his bedroom in the teachers’ quarters.â€
Katumwa also represented the school in traditional dance and played the xylophone when it came to the solo slot during competitions.
“I think that was God’s way of distracting me from the pain and thoughts of how my mother was toiling in the gardens to supply the school with food for my fees,†he recalls.
When other pupils went home for holidays, Katumwa stayed in the school dormitory and helped out on some chores at the director’s house.
He continued sleeping in the school’s dormitory even after completing primary and joining secondary school at Kyambogo College. Mugerwa was paying his fees.
In compensation for the fees, Katumwa continued playing in the school band and doing house chores.
So when other band members were being paid for their role after the band went commercial, Katumwa’s payment would go to Kyambogo College’s coffers and some of it catered for the food he ate at the school.
“I had to walk to school from Kitintale, which is about four miles. I was being caned daily for petty reasons. I became frustrated in that I didn’t sit my S.2 examinations. I repeated the following year and when it came to S.4, the fees delayed and I didn’t sit exams,†Katumwa recalls.
That was the time he left the primary school dormitory, joining his mother in the village and eventually settling with her in Kawempe, a Kampala suburb.
For about two years, Katumwa worked hard to support his mother. He became a saxophonist on unstable jobs with famous bands like Waka-Waka, the Police and Prisons, which he always left for not being paid.
And when he saved some money from his new employment with Grand Imperial’s resident band, he went back to school, eventually completing S6, while working concurrently.
“I would leave Grand Imperial at about 2:00am and walk to Kawempe ahead of my early rising for school at 6:00am. I can’t believe I managed because I had very little time for the subjects I was taking (Physics, Economics, Mathematics and Fine Art).â€
He had, at one time, joined on special entry at Makerere University to pursue Music Dance and Drama, but got bored and left to complete A’level.
Katumwa looks at completing S6 as a big achievement because he never imagined it would happen.
Ushered into the job market after he could not afford university fees, Katumwa was out and about on freelance gigs, playing live instruments to feature in different musicians’ records, doing back-up singing and linking up with instrumentalists like Eddie Ganja and the late Paulo Kafeero, to play tunes for fun.
He has worked with very many Ugandan artistes, some of whom include Afrigo Band, Crossroads Band, Diamonds Ensemble, Mesach Semakula, Kato Lubwama, Tim Kizito, Mariam Ndagire, Fred Sebatta, Juliana Kanyomozi and the Ndere troupe.
“We were the people who made places like Excelsior and Little Flowers must-go weekend hangouts. By the 1990s, I was making enough money for myself and my mother. Opportunities were many and I sometimes got confused on which one to take up,†he recalls.
Katumwa joined the Church in 1999 and cashed in on special-project bands. He had always been a non-practicing born-again Christian.
He was never involved with women and alcohol, and went to the Anglican Church. Part of his inspiration came from his mother, who was a preacher in a small church in Kawempe.
When he eventually joined Pastor Robert Kayanja’s Rubaga Miracle Centre, he saw the light. After concentrating for three years as an instrumentalist there, he met his wife Sheila in 2002, who led praise and worship. They got married in 2003 and have a four-year-old son.
It is at Miracle Centre that he met Chris Lang in 2001, a member of an American Jazz Band which had come to improve the skills of musicians in the church.
“Lang asked me to play the saxophone and was impressed, eventually asking me to join their band, but I had a commitment to my church and said no.
So he gave me his saxophone and has since bought me two others and supported me with the instrument’s accessories through Cross Culture Ministries, a US-based NGO, which supports music from different cultures.â€
In fact, it is Lang who helped Katumwa move to the UK with his wife, and facilitated his Sound Engineering course at City of West Minster, London, which he completed last year.
Having interacted with renowned saxophonists like Michael Pallet of America and Mike Aremu from Nigeria, Katumwa can now reckon with the best.
He is the brain behind Celebrate Africa, a music album he wrote and sang with his wife.
Its opening song, Tumulaalaase, sets off with Latin percussion and brass segments by Katumwa and guitar tunes by renowned guitarist John Bash.
His latest gospel hit, Sinza, incorporates the silkiness of his wife’s chorus skimming of very rich jazz and fine saxophone codes identical to Dave Corrs and Kenny G, but played in typical African style.
Recorded in Michael Pallet’s Talent Studio in the UK, Sinza is one of the most popular songs among the African church community in the diaspora.
It is also playing on local FM stations in South Africa, Kenya and on BBC.
Bash’s resonating guitar, teaming up with Katumwa’s scintillating saxophone codes and a variety of local talent, promises an up-to-the-mark concert.
“When I look back to where I came from, I know it was God’s will at its best. I can’t imagine I am not complaining.
I should get out of here and prepare for my fans,†says the saxophonist, as the interview ends.
ISAIAH Katumwa has no childhood to celebrate. He would rather he skipped that stage because thinking about it makes him sad. He was not loved, or is it that he was not seen to be loved?
“I might be happy and have well-to-do friends today, but my childhood story sometimes grips me and I can’t help hurting. You wouldn’t want your child to go through it,†he says.
Even then, Katumwa believes it is his sad childhood story that made him go against all odds to become the renowned saxophonist that he is today, a talent he and his mother live off.
“Not that I am a tycoon of some sort, but with the progress I am achieving, I can be sure to give my children a much better childhood than mine,†says Katumwa, a London-based saxophonist-cum musician, now back home to perform for his Ugandan fans at Theatre La Bonita in a concert dubbed, ‘Isaiah Katumwa Live’, today at 7:00pm.
At sh25,000 for first class and 40,000 for VIP seating, revellers will be treated to a touch of specialised art, both in instruments and live singing.
Arguably East Africa’s best Jazz artiste, Katumwa was christened ‘Uganda’s Sax Wizard’ at the age of 20 for his distinguished skill.
In a nutshell, he loves his tools – not just the saxophone, but also a number of traditional instruments.
Much as all is well that ends well, the setting under which he learned to play these instruments was not the friendliest — not when, amid biting poverty, he had to stand a series of beatings as motivation to practise.
Beating up the young Katumwa was his caretaker’s idea of love — after all, his father had not bothered to take care of him. “He didn’t want anything to do with me. I don’t know why,†he says in a subdued tone.
Katumwa’s early childhood was nomadic. Even before he was a year old, he was taken from one relative’s house to another’s, until all his aunts and uncles felt they had done enough to help.
For reasons he cannot bring himself to mention, his mother was not in position to take care of him. She was a helpless single mother.
He does not blame her at all because she did her best for him.
“Dad had left because of an inside story I didn’t get to know. Mother had to hand me over, but every after a few months, my relative handed me over to another, saying they had done enough and the cycle continued,†says Katumwa.
At seven years old, Katumwa was enrolled in Makonzi Boarding Primary School in Mubende district, with the school fees his father grudgingly paid.
His mother would have to figure out where he would stay for the holidays since they did not have a home.
In his first term in P3, his father stopped paying his fees and detached himself from Katumwa and his mother.
Katumwa could have become a street kid, but he chose to join his mother in the village to dig for a year, in preparation for him to go back to school in case their crops sold at a good price.
Luckily for the desperate little boy, his mother was introduced to Washington Mugerwa, the director of Reverend John Foundation School in Kitintale, who allowed her to supply his school with food, in payment for the boy’s school fees.
Katumwa’s P3 class in the new school was under a tree where they studied, except when it rained.
“I was the brightest kid in class and also excelled in the choir, which was incorporated into the school band when Mugerwa bought one after about a year,†recalls Katumwa, who was made to skip to P6 after he passed a P5 Mathematics paper, yet he was in P4.
By P6, he had learnt to play the guitar, bugle and the trombone well.
“Mugerwa realised I was talented. So he bought a saxophone, which he asked me to try out.
Getting me to perfect playing it came with thorough beating, almost daily. He claimed it was his way of showing me love. Being the only saxophonist, I practised in his bedroom in the teachers’ quarters.â€
Katumwa also represented the school in traditional dance and played the xylophone when it came to the solo slot during competitions.
“I think that was God’s way of distracting me from the pain and thoughts of how my mother was toiling in the gardens to supply the school with food for my fees,†he recalls.
When other pupils went home for holidays, Katumwa stayed in the school dormitory and helped out on some chores at the director’s house.
He continued sleeping in the school’s dormitory even after completing primary and joining secondary school at Kyambogo College. Mugerwa was paying his fees.
In compensation for the fees, Katumwa continued playing in the school band and doing house chores.
So when other band members were being paid for their role after the band went commercial, Katumwa’s payment would go to Kyambogo College’s coffers and some of it catered for the food he ate at the school.
“I had to walk to school from Kitintale, which is about four miles. I was being caned daily for petty reasons. I became frustrated in that I didn’t sit my S.2 examinations. I repeated the following year and when it came to S.4, the fees delayed and I didn’t sit exams,†Katumwa recalls.
That was the time he left the primary school dormitory, joining his mother in the village and eventually settling with her in Kawempe, a Kampala suburb.
For about two years, Katumwa worked hard to support his mother. He became a saxophonist on unstable jobs with famous bands like Waka-Waka, the Police and Prisons, which he always left for not being paid.
And when he saved some money from his new employment with Grand Imperial’s resident band, he went back to school, eventually completing S6, while working concurrently.
“I would leave Grand Imperial at about 2:00am and walk to Kawempe ahead of my early rising for school at 6:00am. I can’t believe I managed because I had very little time for the subjects I was taking (Physics, Economics, Mathematics and Fine Art).â€
He had, at one time, joined on special entry at Makerere University to pursue Music Dance and Drama, but got bored and left to complete A’level.
Katumwa looks at completing S6 as a big achievement because he never imagined it would happen.
Ushered into the job market after he could not afford university fees, Katumwa was out and about on freelance gigs, playing live instruments to feature in different musicians’ records, doing back-up singing and linking up with instrumentalists like Eddie Ganja and the late Paulo Kafeero, to play tunes for fun.
He has worked with very many Ugandan artistes, some of whom include Afrigo Band, Crossroads Band, Diamonds Ensemble, Mesach Semakula, Kato Lubwama, Tim Kizito, Mariam Ndagire, Fred Sebatta, Juliana Kanyomozi and the Ndere troupe.
“We were the people who made places like Excelsior and Little Flowers must-go weekend hangouts. By the 1990s, I was making enough money for myself and my mother. Opportunities were many and I sometimes got confused on which one to take up,†he recalls.
Katumwa joined the Church in 1999 and cashed in on special-project bands. He had always been a non-practicing born-again Christian.
He was never involved with women and alcohol, and went to the Anglican Church. Part of his inspiration came from his mother, who was a preacher in a small church in Kawempe.
When he eventually joined Pastor Robert Kayanja’s Rubaga Miracle Centre, he saw the light. After concentrating for three years as an instrumentalist there, he met his wife Sheila in 2002, who led praise and worship. They got married in 2003 and have a four-year-old son.
It is at Miracle Centre that he met Chris Lang in 2001, a member of an American Jazz Band which had come to improve the skills of musicians in the church.
“Lang asked me to play the saxophone and was impressed, eventually asking me to join their band, but I had a commitment to my church and said no.
So he gave me his saxophone and has since bought me two others and supported me with the instrument’s accessories through Cross Culture Ministries, a US-based NGO, which supports music from different cultures.â€
In fact, it is Lang who helped Katumwa move to the UK with his wife, and facilitated his Sound Engineering course at City of West Minster, London, which he completed last year.
Having interacted with renowned saxophonists like Michael Pallet of America and Mike Aremu from Nigeria, Katumwa can now reckon with the best.
He is the brain behind Celebrate Africa, a music album he wrote and sang with his wife.
Its opening song, Tumulaalaase, sets off with Latin percussion and brass segments by Katumwa and guitar tunes by renowned guitarist John Bash.
His latest gospel hit, Sinza, incorporates the silkiness of his wife’s chorus skimming of very rich jazz and fine saxophone codes identical to Dave Corrs and Kenny G, but played in typical African style.
Recorded in Michael Pallet’s Talent Studio in the UK, Sinza is one of the most popular songs among the African church community in the diaspora.
It is also playing on local FM stations in South Africa, Kenya and on BBC.
Bash’s resonating guitar, teaming up with Katumwa’s scintillating saxophone codes and a variety of local talent, promises an up-to-the-mark concert.
“When I look back to where I came from, I know it was God’s will at its best. I can’t imagine I am not complaining.
I should get out of here and prepare for my fans,†says the saxophonist, as the interview ends.