Is musical jargon re-defining our speech?

LOCAL artistes, through their songs, are fast re-defining the way we speak conventional lingo. Colourful words like Kiwani and Mazongoto are not only shaping the language used by media, politicians and society at large, the majority love it. Joseph Batte, Joshua Kato and Sebidde Kiryowa examine the phenomenon.

ONCE upon a time, Ugandan musicians wrote songs with straightforward lyrics and sweet melodies. You did not need to scratch your head to decipher their meaning. Alas! Things have changed!

In the last few years, we have witnessed a new phenomenon in song writing. Artistes (especially young ones) are releasing songs made up of a set of either all together new jargon or familiar words and phrases that take on an entirely different meaning from their socially agreed upon semantic use.

Interestingly, this new colloquial speak has not only been fully embraced, encouraged and appreciated by their loyal fans, but has started making its way into spoken language.

The sound of songs with slang and to a certain degree (vulgar lyrics) is echoing everywhere –— mazongoto, bada, kiwani, faamu, ekyapa, ggali ekozeeko, digi, akameeme, among others.

This phenomenon has prompted a lot of head-shaking from the purists, especially the proud guardians of local languages like Luganda, the dominant lingua franca in the local music industry.

The older generation of music fans who grew up listening to Fred Masagazi, Peterson Mutebi, the Cranes and Rwenzori bands are also wondering what on earth is going on.

Is this new generation of artistes so artistically bankrupt that they cannot write good songs with lyrics that are easily understood, or are they heroes for heralding a revolution in a fast-changing industry where the difference between conservatism and creativity is musical death!

The truth is this is a new generation. Call it the high-tech generation ruled by the Internet, MP3 and Ipod, and God knows what other sophisticated gadgetry. High-tech multi-track studios that can be rigged up in your bedroom have replaced single-track music studios.

Today, a single musician can play all the tracks, sing both lead and back up vocals and burn the music on a CD with hardly any help. Ask Jose Chameleone.

As a result of this, instead of spending time tuning the guitar, young artistes are channelling their creativity into lyrical ingenuity, creating all kinds of words and phrases that are creating such a buzz across the country.

Why? Because the law that governs languages says so. Any language expert will tell you that language grows, most especially if it comes into contact with another culture (read popular culture here).

Isaac Mulindwa, the chairman of Pearl of Africa Music (PAM) Awards agrees: “People tend to think that the quality of music has gone down when they hear new jargon in the music. We should remember that each generation has it own language. These young artistes are actually sending out a powerful message.

They are saying: hey listen up. This is our generation. This is how we make our music and this is the way we speak. They want to stand out by cultivating a huge fan base and it is working.”

True that. This new lingo is so infectious it has even permeated seasoned politicians’ speech. In his recent speech, former Kampala mayor and Democratic Party (DP) president, Sebaana Kizito said: “Whatever the Government is doing by threatening to take over Kampala is kiwani.”

This was during a weekly press conference held at the party headquarters recently. The DP strongman was referring to Bobi Wine’s latest hit, Kiwani, which is sweeping across the country like a wild fire.

The word kiwani has been popularised by the singer and is the title of his latest album. At the launch of the album recently, Bobi Wine explained that he borrowed kiwani from the word biwaani (colloquial speak for sunglasses).

“Sunglasses are used to cover the eyes, either for fun or protection from the sun. In the movies, they are favourite accessories for villains and shady characters,” says Wine. In his view, life in Kampala is nothing more than sunglasses — a veneer that people wear to facilitate their survival. Nothing is really what it seems.

“Fraud is the most lucrative business in Kampala. So many people are engaged in all sorts of crooked deals. They enrich themselves by blatantly lying and cheating,” he explains. Hence, ekyo kiwani or simply kiwani, is a way to identify a fraud or lie.

Last year, Wine won the PAM Award Artiste of the Year on the strength of a song people preferred to call Bada.

He, however, said over and over again that the song was called Omwana Wabandi. Wine’s other composition, the politically charged Ghetto, expressed the reality of life in the slums in addition to several other issues.

In the song, he liberally used words like dikini (to mean petrol) bazarawa (despising) corrupted from the Swahili word Kuzarawa which means the same thing, to drive the message home.

Ekikomando is another jargon by the same singer which caught the fancy of many. Wine sings about surviving the hard way (like a commando) on a combination of chapati and beans for lunch or supper. He called this meal kikomando.

Another word that is currently doing the rounds on the streets is mazongoto, which was lifted from singer Dr. Hilderman’s hit Double Bed.

Dr. Hilderman sings in the song that a double bed often leads to sexual deprivation because your partner will always be “10 metres away”.

As a result, many would-be happily married couples have since separated. Incidentally, it is not the term “double bed” that the public picked out of the song. It was the colourful mazongoto that stole the show.

Politicians have embraced this word. After the reading of the budget on June 14, one vocal Member of Parliament (MP) was overheard using the word in his critical analysis of the budget that had just been presented by finance minister Ezra Suruma. “This budget has been mazongoto,” the opposition MP said disgustedly.

And the media are not far behind. Bukedde, a leading Luganda daily, recently used the headline ‘League ya Uganda mazongoto’, in reference to the confusion and falling standards of football that have dogged the local football league for more than half a decade.

Kato Kawuma, the sports editor, says he was compelled to use the word because of the sheer power it had to communicate his message. “I wanted to depict the confusion in the local league. I knew mazongoto connoted something negative,” he says.

“I knew that to communicate to my target audience effectively, I had to use a word they could better identify with.” It worked!
As if intent on causing more confusion, the same paper on another occasion reported, ‘Babaakute bali mu mazongoto’ (they were found in mazongoto), in reference to a couple who were found committing adultery. Mazongoto (confusion) had been broadened to mean sex!

A local tabloid used the word in a headline story to describe the size of bed former health minister Maj. Gen. Jim Muhwezi had allegedly been given in his Luzira Prison cell when he was sent there.

Dr Hilderman, who sang Double Bed is himself at pains to explain what the word means. During a recent interview, he said: “It means confusion.” However, from its use in the song, it seems to mean “prone to cause confusion.”

Other media sources quoted Dr. Hilderman as saying the word meant “something bad, terrible.”

Whereas some artistes have actually invented new jargon, others have taken obscure words and phrases and given them a whole new meaning, often with a tinge of controversy, popularising them in the process.

Kadongo Kamu singer Gerald Kiwewa’s Ggali Ekozeko (Luganda for used bicycle, has probably been one of the most controversial. Kiwewa sings that if he were to marry, he would prefer a divorcee. His argument is that she is well-initiated.

Having faced the pitfalls of marriage before, she is well-placed to handle the challenges. However, the song was open to criticism at the time of its release, with women activists lashing out at the singer for demeaning women.

The most widely perceived meaning was a ‘used’ woman – a woman with prior sexual experience, or one with a child. For many young people, it clearly weighed the young ‘fresh’ women against the ‘used’ ones.

This phrase gained wide usage among both Luganda and non-Luganda speakers. Kiwewa then dropped another — Akameme (pavement), in which he implores a woman who tells him she is already married, to at least carry him on her ‘pavement’ (take him on as a casual lover).

The word was widely perceived to mean a ‘side dish’ — a casual lover in an extra-marital affair. Again, Kiwewe was in trouble with critics.

Interestingly though, the deeper the controversy, the more popular the words become.

Equally controversial, has been Abdu Mulaasi’s (another youthful Kadongo Kamu singer) jargon. His use of Faamu ya Bakyala (a farm of women) was taken to mean the ‘pool’ of wives that polygamous men have. In the song, he said he only wanted good-looking women with difu (large buttocks) on his farm.

Difu probably caught on better than farm. He then took ekyapa, a Luganda word which conventionally means “land title” and broadened its meaning (in context) to mean a child as security.

“If a woman is to be taken seriously,” he sings, “she needs to bear proof of her usefulness — ekyapa.” Again, women were enraged for being portrayed as baby machines and good for nothing else but that.

When the dynamic duo of Aydee and Pato (Ngoni) breezed onto the local music scene for the first time, they did so with Digi, a slamming hybrid of Caribbean rhythms and Afrobeat sounds.

But the aesthetics of the song aside, the word digi (colloquial speak for motorbike) left many fascinated. Whereas the boys insisted they used the word in its literal sense, many understood it to be a figurative reference to the act of having sex.

A few years ago, singer Harriet Kisakye released a song titled Kandahar. It was at a time when the Americans and other forces were battling it out with the

Taliban in Afghanistan. Kandahar is one of the Afghan cities were the Americans fought some of the toughest battles. Kisakye preferred to use the word in reference to love making, or as some later interpreted it, the female sexual organ.

One of the lines in the song went:
“Tugendeko e Kandahar” (let us go to Kandahar). Kandahar was subsequently picked by not only individuals, but also one of the local tabloids. It became a substitute word for female genitalia, so much so that it was actually considered vulgar!

Tanzania-based Ugandan artiste Ziggy Dee made millions in a couple of months for introducing the word “mic” (short for microphone) as an image for the male sexual organ. Master Parrot used ekikobola for the same, but with less effect.

The king of veiled meanings, however, is Lord Fred Sebatta. He has a way of talking about sex without being disrespectful or vulgar.

He creates a new slang for every vulgar word possible. When he felt like singing about sex, he came up with euphemisms like Dolly y’omwana, Kilimanjaro, Circus and Gologosa. Although none of these has had the near impact to the aforementioned, they have had their following.

There are also artistes who have enriched the local language because listeners have drawn what they thought the artistes meant from context. Such songs tend to be constructive social commentaries.

Tuli ku Bunkenke (we are on the edge or we are under pressure) by Ronald Mayinja is a song that reflected the financial hassles of daily life in Uganda.

“Everybody has got problems. Even those who are driving are suffering under the weight of heavy debts,” one of the lines in the song goes.

However, the song took on a whole new meaning because of the heightened political tension at the time it was released. This was when Rtd Col. Dr Kizza Besigye was arrested shortly after returning from exile, on charges of rape.

Elections were just around the corner and riots, tear gas and property destruction were the order of the day in town.

Naturally, the song became an anthem for opposition politicians and ordinary citizens alike, who viewed the song as a social commentary by Mayinja addressing the situation. The expression immediately found its way into popular talk.

Haruna Mubiru released Ekitooke Kiffa Nsalira in 2004, as a reminder to men to take care of the material needs of their women in order to make better people of them, instead of spending time ogling other people’s women.

“Your woman can look just as good if you take good care of her,” he sang. The phrase has since stuck.

Today, women only need to say “ekitooke kiffa nsalira,” to remind their men to do the needful.
More than a decade ago, Kadongo Kamu artiste Willy Mukabya, penned a hilarious song Kanyanda, in which he tells of a houseboy, Kayanda, who sleeps with the boss’ wife. Instantly, houseboys were nicknamed Kayanda, with warnings that married men should always be wary of them.

The late Kadongo Kamu star, Paul Kafeero, produced about 15 albums. However, one of the most interesting of them was Dippo Nazigala (I closed the depots). He was referring to beer depots.

Today, people who quit drinking will say “dippo nazigala.”
Singer Roy Kapale wrote Ebitaala Bintadde (released by traffic lights) to announce that he had finally stumbled upon love after years of searching for Miss Right.

Today, the phrase is widely used by people in reference to hard-earned success in any field, or a breakthrough.