By Atwemereireho Alex (alexatweme@gmail.com)
Some musicians leave songs behind. A rare few leave a musical institution, a generation of disciples and a vocabulary through which a country continues to remember itself. Moses Matovu belonged to that exceptional class. His farewell is therefore not simply the closing of a musician’s career; it is the passing of one of the principal custodians of Uganda’s modern live-band tradition.
Born on June 19, 1949, in Kawempe, Kampala, to Abdallah Bukenya bin Adam and Solome Nakitto, Matovu encountered music almost before he encountered professional life. He sang in the Namirembe Cathedral Choir from childhood, attended Namirembe Primary School and later Kibuli Secondary School, and entered professional music with Thunderbirds Band in 1967. He joined the Police Band in 1968 and the Cranes Band in 1969. Those years were his apprenticeship in performance, arrangement and the disciplined craft of live music. In 1970, he recorded “Jimmy Saasira”, one of his earliest original compositions, about a woman abandoned by her husband with their children and appealing for his return. He also composed “Katonda Yakola Omukwano” and other early works before Afrigo gave his musical career its defining institutional home.
On August 31, 1975, following the collapse of the Cranes Band, Matovu joined Tony Ssenkebejje, Jef Sewava, Charles Ssekyanzi, Jessy Gitta and other musicians in establishing Afrigo Band in Kampala. Contemporary accounts identify the original formation as a group of eight young musicians. The name Afrigo has commonly been explained as an expression of “Africa go”, capturing the founders’ ambition to take African music forward. Their early performances developed a distinctive blend of Congolese rumba, jazz, funk, Ugandan traditional rhythms and folk influences, predominantly through Luganda, while also embracing other Ugandan languages and Kiswahili. The first gig was performed in 1975 at Bat Valley, the venue now associated with Club Obligato, which subsequently became deeply connected with Afrigo’s identity.
The historical importance of that decision cannot be overstated. Uganda was entering one of the most turbulent periods in its post-independence history, yet a group of musicians was constructing something whose lifespan would ultimately outlast governments, political crises, changing musical fashions and several generations of performers. Afrigo was not simply another dance band. It became a cultural institution.
The founding generation included Matovu, Ssenkebejje, Sewava, Ssekyanzi and Gitta, alongside musicians such as Paul Serumaga, Fred Kigozi, Tony Sengo, Herman Ssewanyana, Mansoor Bulegeya and Deo Mukungu, among others documented in the band’s early history. Several of these pioneers are no longer alive; Sewava later established Afrigo Waves in Germany, while Ssenkebejje went on to lead Simba Sounds. Their individual journeys demonstrate something important about Afrigo: the institution was larger than any one musician, yet its members carried its musical philosophy into other bands and countries.
The early years were anything but easy. Afrigo lost equipment during the upheavals surrounding the fall of Idi Amin and was forced to rebuild. Yet the musicians returned to the stage and eventually established themselves at venues such as Little Flowers on Bombo Road, where the band experienced one of its most important revivals. By the late 1980s, Afrigo had undergone significant personnel changes, recruited new musicians and rebuilt its audience. Its ability to regroup after musicians departed was one of the clearest demonstrations that Matovu had helped create an institution rather than merely a personal brand.
This is where the next generation becomes indispensable to the story. Joanita Kawalya joined Afrigo in 1986, while Rachael Magoola joined in 1989. They were considerably younger than the founding generation and represented the first major generational renewal that allowed the band’s identity to travel beyond its founders. Kawalya became one of Uganda’s most recognisable female band vocalists, while Magoola became a singer, composer and performer whose work extended well beyond Afrigo. Eddie Yawe, Frank Mbalire, Sammy Kasule, Herman Ssewanyana, Godfrey Mwambala, Rashid Musoke, Charles Busulwa, Julius Nshaba, Daniel Kaggwa, Jacinta Wamboga and Sarah Namiyonga were among the musicians and performers associated with different periods of Afrigo’s long journey. The personnel changed, but the institutional DNA survived.
It is important, however, to distinguish that generation from the genuinely younger musicians who came later. Joanita Kawalya and Rachael Magoola, although once the young face of Afrigo, are themselves now established veterans of Uganda’s music industry. The more intellectually accurate way to understand the present succession is to see Afrigo as a chain of generations: the founders created the institution; the Kawalya-Magoola generation helped renew and popularise it; subsequent musicians and instrumentalists including Joe Tabula, Peter Bazanye, Edmond Ganja, Charles Busulwa, Daniel Kaggwa, Isaac Zzimbe and other later recruits continued to give the band contemporary life. The significance of Matovu’s leadership lies partly in this capacity for succession. He understood that an institution survives not by keeping its founders permanently young, but by continually making room for musicians who were not yet born when it began.
The catalogue provides another route into the story. “Jimmy Saasira” was an appeal for family reconciliation; “Katonda Yakola Omukwano” reflected on love as something created by God; “Emiziro” engaged with traditional beliefs and cultural prohibitions; “Ekkizi Ekadde” drew on the idea of the old or established order; “Sofia” and “Nantongo” explored admiration and feminine beauty; “Silina Anantwaala” carried the emotional language of romantic devotion; and “Teri Mubi” challenged the assumption that beauty can be judged universally, suggesting that what one person considers unattractive may be cherished by another. “Genda Osome” placed education at the centre of its message, showing that popular music could participate in social instruction as well as entertainment.
“Afrigo Batuuse I” was more than a song; it was an introduction and declaration of identity. It presented Afrigo and its musicians to audiences and, over time, became an unintended historical archive. “Afrigo Batuuse II” extended that musical identity, while “Jim” became associated with love and relationships, “Mundeke” with romantic fidelity, “Twali Twagalana” with remembered affection, “Amazzi Genyama” with the darker imagery of human experience, “Rose Guma” and “Nnemeddwa” with relationship and emotional themes, and “Mp’Eddembe” with freedom. “Obangaina”, “Vincent”, “Olumbe Lw’Obwavu”, “Olimujja Wa”, “Bwosika Ekitajja”, “Omusujja”, “Nkoye”, “Bwenkanya”, “Suzana”, “Zalwango”, “Nfunda N’Omubi”, “Minzani” and “Maria” broadened the repertoire across love, social life, hardship, morality, memory and everyday human experience. These works were not all written by Matovu, and that distinction is essential. Afrigo’s greatness was collective.
The catalogue associated specifically with his songwriting includes “Jimmy Saasira”, “Katonda Yakola Omukwano”, “Emiziro”, “Ekkizi Ekadde”, “Sofia”, “Nantongo”, “Silina Anantwaala”, “Teri Mubi”, “Genda Osome” and “Afrigo Batuuse I”, among others. Each illustrates a different facet of his artistic imagination: family responsibility, faith, culture, memory, beauty, love, education and institutional identity. His contribution was therefore not simply the production of catchy melodies. It was the conversion of ordinary Ugandan experiences into durable cultural texts.
The 2019 album Teri Mubi offered perhaps the clearest demonstration of his philosophy of musical continuity. The 11-track album placed new material alongside older compositions, including “Emiziro”, which had originally been recorded around 1970 with the Cranes Band. The old composition was reconstructed with saxophones, keyboards, percussion, drums and a more contemporary arrangement. What had once been recorded with relatively modest instrumentation was given a new musical architecture without abandoning its original identity. That was not merely an exercise in nostalgia; it was cultural transmission across generations.
Afrigo’s catalogue eventually expanded to 23 albums, including Afrigo Batuuse I, Jim, Genda Osome, Vincent, Mp’Eddembe, The Best of Afrigo, Julie, Afrigo Batuuse II, Omutanda Gyali and Katonda Tumusinzenga. By the band’s golden jubilee in 2025, its history represented five decades of Ugandan popular music, from analogue live performance and physical records to the digital streaming era.
The band’s influence also travelled beyond its own personnel. Afrigo helped sustain the live-band model at a time when Uganda’s popular music increasingly moved towards electronically produced and programmed music. Its insistence on singers, saxophones, trumpets, guitars, bass, keyboards, drums and percussion provided an alternative musical education to generations of performers. Its long-running presence helped demonstrate that Ugandan music could be professionally arranged, instrumentally sophisticated and commercially viable without abandoning local language and cultural identity. That example contributed to the continued revival of live bands and encouraged musicians who wanted to perform rather than merely mime to recorded tracks.
Its influence was also visible in musicians and bands that emerged around or alongside its orbit. Former members carried Afrigo’s musicianship into other ensembles, including Simba Sounds under Tony Ssenkebejje and Afrigo Waves under Jef Sewava. The wider Ugandan band tradition also absorbed the lessons of Afrigo’s instrumentation, stagecraft, multilingual repertoire and organisational discipline. The influence was therefore not always a direct matter of one band copying another; it was more profound, a transmission of musical practice from one generation and ensemble to another.
This is perhaps the strongest argument for describing Afrigo as a national cultural institution. The band became bigger than its stars. It survived the departure of important musicians, the deaths of pioneers, economic difficulties, equipment losses and dramatic changes in Uganda’s entertainment industry. In 1988, when many musicians left, the remaining members regrouped within weeks and recruited new talent. That resilience was not accidental. It reflected an institutional culture that had been cultivated over years.
The international dimension deserves equal recognition. Afrigo toured and performed for Ugandan communities in Europe and the United States, allowing the diaspora to encounter Uganda not through political speeches or diplomatic ceremonies but through music. A Luganda lyric, a familiar saxophone line or an old dance rhythm could collapse thousands of kilometres into a few minutes. In this respect, Afrigo became an unofficial cultural ambassador for Uganda long before the language of cultural diplomacy became fashionable.
The golden jubilee in 2025 placed this achievement in historical perspective. Afrigo marked 50 years with a major celebration at Millennium Grounds, Lugogo, and launched Omuziki Guwooma, translated as “Music is Sweet”, documenting the band’s journey. The anniversary was not merely a celebration of longevity; it was evidence that an institution founded by young musicians in 1975 had managed to remain culturally relevant half a century later.
There is something deeply moving, therefore, about musicians from different generations gathering around the memory of the man who helped hold their institution together. At his vigil, the gathering of musicians; old colleagues, younger practitioners, singers, instrumentalists and members of the wider entertainment fraternity – could be understood as more than a funeral assembly. It was, in a profound sense, a reunion of Uganda’s musical generations around one of their principal architects. The young stood beside the veterans; those who had shared stages decades ago stood beside those who inherited the stages later. In that gathering, Afrigo’s history was no longer an abstract chronology. It became human.
That gathering also exposes the inadequacy of treating musical legacy as a matter of individual celebrity. The true measure of an artist is sometimes found in the people who remain after him: those who learned from him, those whose careers were strengthened by the institution he helped build, those who continue performing the repertoire he helped create, and those young musicians who may never have shared his stage but nevertheless inherited a musical ecosystem shaped by his generation.
A farewell of this magnitude should therefore resist the easy language of nostalgia. The historical record is sufficient. Professional music began in the 1960s. Afrigo was established in 1975. The band survived extraordinary political and economic disruptions. It produced 23 albums and hundreds of songs. Its music travelled across generations and national borders. Its musicians became singers, composers, instrumentalists, bandleaders and mentors in their own right. Its golden jubilee in 2025 confirmed its place among Uganda’s most enduring cultural institutions.
The responsibility now belongs to Uganda’s cultural institutions, broadcasters, musicians, historians and scholars to preserve this inheritance properly. Afrigo’s recordings should be systematically archived and digitised; its oral history should be documented while surviving members can still narrate it; its repertoire deserves scholarly study; and the careers of its musicians should be preserved as part of Uganda’s cultural history. A nation that loses its cultural archives loses more than entertainment. It loses evidence of how its people once spoke, loved, danced, mourned, celebrated and understood themselves.
The greatest tribute, consequently, is not to freeze Afrigo in the past. It is to allow the institution to continue evolving. The founding generation created the foundation; the next generation strengthened it; today’s musicians must carry it forward; and tomorrow’s musicians must be allowed to transform it again. That is how culture survives; not through imitation, but through intelligent continuity.
Moses Matovu’s legacy is therefore larger than the microphone he held, the saxophone he played or the songs he composed. It lies in the institution he helped establish, the standards he defended, the musicians he mentored, the generations he connected and the distinctly Ugandan musical language he helped carry beyond Uganda’s borders.
The saxophone has fallen silent, but the sound has not disappeared. It remains in the recordings, in the repertoire, in Afrigo’s musicians, in the younger generation now inheriting the stage, in the diaspora that continues to find home in its melodies and in the countless Ugandans for whom an Afrigo song is not merely a song but a piece of biography.
The writer is a lawyer, researcher, governance analyst and a Master of law student in Natural Resources Law at Kampala International University. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
