Olugendo (1999)
9 tracks, 55 minutes
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Okay, okay. If you know me, you’ll have heard this album in at least some capacity. Because it’s an album that I consider to be basically criminally underrated. Not even underrated, actually, it’s more the fact that it is almost completely unknown. And because of that, I’ve ended up writing about Bernard Kabanda again and again in various capacities. So it’s got to this strange point where people haven’t heard his music but that I feel weird to keep writing about him. But Olugendo is undoubtedly a Good Album, so in the blog it most rightly goes.
Bernard Kabanda is one of the most mesmerising guitarists I’ve ever heard. His guitar lines are sweet and simple-sounding in a really joyous way, but there’s nothing simple about them at all. Other cultures in central/east Africa have longstanding guitar traditions in which several guitarists (and a bassist) play interlocking melodies that sound like magic when all put together. Kabanda gets that same sort of sound, but he somehow does it all with one pair of hands and six strings. Listen to any track on this album and you’ll hear it: he’s playing a bassline, he’s playing rhythmic chords, he’s playing a melody and a countermelody, all at the same time. I have no idea how he did it. Also, as you can see from the cover illustration, he had a unique horizontal way of holding his guitar that allowed him to tap out a beat on the body of the instrument with his elbow. That’s five different parts he’s playing, just on one acoustic guitar!
And we’ve not even mentioned his singing yet. What a beautiful, gentle voice. His guitar-playing, for all its complexities, provides the basis for the songs. They are light and airy and his voice is full of laughter, although his songs cover so many topics. There are fun tales, but there are also serious stories, political messages and life guidance too. You can read short synopses of each track in the full sleeve notes, available on the Real World Records website.
I guess I can’t really talk about Bernard Kabanda without telling my story of him, either, although I’ve told it many times before. I’ve been going to the WOMAD festival every year since I was 1, but obviously in those early years, I didn’t have much choice about my time there – I was just carted from stage to stage by my parents, soaking up the sounds and gaining knowledge and a passion that would last…well, at least until now. But then at WOMAD in 1999, I was looking through the programme and for some reason (I still don’t know why), I latched upon one artist in particular – Bernard Kabanda. I insisted we went to go to see him, so we did. He was on a small stage with a small audience, just him with his guitar and his friend Samuel Bakkabulindi on percussions (who you’ll also hear on this album). I was enraptured. He was the first musician I ever ‘went’ to see, and it was such a perfect performance, I’m sure it impacted me for life. I even borrowed my mum’s camera to take a picture – he spotted me lining up my shot and gave me the biggest, most beautiful smile. Wonderful. We bought his album that had just been released, and it was an instant favourite.
That was in July. In September, Bernard died from illness related to HIV/AIDS at only 40 years old. I remember when my dad told me and I was distraught. I carried it with me too, and I cried in school the next day. Can you imagine the bafflement for the teachers? An 8-year-old boy in a Cheshire village primary school is crying inconsolably at the death of a musician from Uganda. He wasn’t even famous, although I hope that if he had lived, he would have got the international career he deserved.
Flash forward to 2017. I’d just got my first British Library card with all of the access of its legendary sound archives that that allows. I had a whole history of music to delve into, but I knew exactly where my first excursion was going to take me. And there it was: 23rd July 1999 – Bernard Kabanda at the WOMAD Festival. For me, where it all started. When I listened to it on those big uncomfortable headphones in the British Library Rare Books & Music Reading Room, I cried again.
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