Sebatta marks 30 years in music

The mention of his name elicits a mention of Kadongo Kamu music genre, the local ‘one-beat’ music version of the popular country music. Lord Fred Sebatta is one of the surviving icons of Kadongo Kamu but even as the genre weakens both in content and listenership the musical lord is still going strong.

He is a celebrity in a world where big cars and houses are nothing to floss about but where music is meant to cause social change. His is a humble world just like his beginnings as an artiste.
Before Sebatta took the bold step to record his first album, which he titled Sam Wange in 1981, he was a music fan just like you and me.

He was a particular admirer of Elly Wamala who he considers one of Kadongo Kamu’s grandfathers.
Back at home music had its place since both his parents loved music too, but the type who mumbled to their favourite songs as they went about doing their daily chores.

“My dad would hum while harvesting coffee, in late 1960s when Segamwenge’s bamugamba played after the fall of Obote One. My mother was a house wife,” Sebatta recounts. “At school my teachers singled me out and they would retain me at school for music practice as the other pupils went home,” Sebatta recounts. As a boy he saw this as a bother but little did he know that his teacher had singled him out because of his unique talent.

That’s how he ended up being the lead singer at Music Dance and Drama (MDD) fetes at which his school- Kiboga Primary School- competed with others, in the late 1960s and 1970s.
As he grew up, he began to take personal interest in music and right about the same time he could no longer continue going to school.

“That was before I joined Kalinabiri Senior Secondary School. I stopped in Senior Two because of limited finances. My father told me to stop there so that my siblings would also study,” the singer recollects.

He tried teaching at Kikandwa for one year but failed to continue. He says, “The money was little and I had to walk three and a half miles.” His parents tried to help him find a living. His father sent him to Kampala to assist his uncle, a mechanic, in a garage. But this was never Sebatta’s thing and an incident pushed him away.

“One day while at the garage under a Mango tree just above the old park one Kimera sent me to bring him a spanner but I took longer than he could wait so he came and boxed me in the face for delaying. I was hurt,” he narrates.

He had heard of Kampala Boxing Club and within two hours, he had made his way to this training camp. But like fate would have it he got an accident and the doctor told him to call it quits or lose his hearing sense.

“So I went back to mechanics this time in Ndeeba but I would never settle in the garage. I just did not fit in this world,” he adds. It was something to do with the noise and topsy-turvy world that are garages. So the shy mechanic began trying his talent as an artiste. He linked up with artistes like Prossy Nabigumira who later became his lost rib.

“I asked Dan Mugula Kadongo Kamu Cultural Company. I wrote to him and he accepted me into his company. My first show was at White Nile in about 1981. I was tipped. My love for music was increased,” he recollects.

His first song, Sam Wange, was an instant hit. He did the song with his fiancé Nabigumira. The song became so popular that one Kabugo made money off it. Sebatta went on to do Sekiriba Kyataka. But from then Sebatta says that he has been using Kadongo Kamu not only to entertain but to communicate messages.

“Kadongo Kamu is a chance to celebrate as you learn. I can talk to a thief without offending them or talk to an elusive partner without naming names like in my song Narwewuba in which I was talking about infidelity,” the veteran singer explains. Today Sebatta boasts of 20 albums to his name. He is also willing to share about the history of this music genre.

“It was started by Christopher Ssebaddukka but looking further back it was Elly Wamala with his Nabutono. It is genre that talked to people through a guitar. The tunes come from the bakisimba- a beat with five notes,” Sebatta shares.

But unlike today where a singer will go through a recording session in hardly half an hour, Sebatta says the initial recording sessions he went through were rigorous.
“We used to record using a magnetic tape with other machines before programming today took over. But the quality using magnetic tape is better. We would go to studio all of us. We would record on tape.

I recorded my first song Sam wange in a garden,” the leader of Matendo Guitar recollects.
Next time he heard the song, it was playing on Radio Uganda.

This year Sebatta marks three decades as a Kadongo Kamu artiste, a genre he says has been sidelined by local radio, which will hardly play one Kadongo Kamu song in a long while.

Nonetheless, Sebatta is optimistic that if the urban, younger generation can embrace this genre like their contemporaries have in rural Uganda then the future of Kadongo Kamu could live beyond what critics term as a doomed future.

Some albums
1. Sam Wange
2. Ekyagaza Omubi
3. Abaganda Twewemudde
4. Amaziga g’ente
5. Omusango Gw’abazadde
6. Etala y’obufumbo
7. Abagenda Bandikomwewo
8. Nva Kumusawo
9. Ekifula nenge
10. Gwanga Mugye
11. Gologosa
12. Dole w’omwana
13. Nalwewuba
14. Kirimanjaro
15. Gambling
16. Teriba ddogo
17. Omutindo Gw’abyamaguzi

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