Prime
When improvisation meets musical lyrics
Brenda Fassie performs in 2003. PHOTO/ AFP
What you need to know:
- In this two-part series titled Sung it Wrong, Gabriel Buule spotlights songs whose lyrics were localised by Ugandans at a time when an Internet search was not an option.
On March 1, 1954, when the colonial administration introduced radio broadcasting in Uganda, the primary role of radio was to enhance public education. Music was limited to a handful of foreign recordings.
Few songs had been recorded by Ugandans at the time. Per Diplock Ssegawa, a musician, Elly Wamala’s song Nabutono—presumably Uganda’s first commercial musical piece to be put to vinyl—enjoyed a lot of airplay on Radio Uganda.
With time, music became part of the radio movement and Ugandans started recording music, especially in Kenya and Sweden. Jack Kinobe Sserunkuuma, a theatre artiste, recalls that most foreign music played at the time was Caribbean, South African, Kenya and Congolese music. He adds that—with limited options to choose from—the available music would be played repeatedly. This made it stick in people’s minds.
“Facts about music and the musicians were usually scanty and sometimes, presenters would misspeak song titles and the names of singers,” Kinobe told Saturday Monitor.
Ag Shame Lovey
As a result, Ugandans ended up localising many songs. Take Brenda Fassie’s Ag Shame Lovey that morphed to anything from Midodo, Jjajja wo muteesi wa lo or even Jjajja wo yafa Bulooro literally translated as poultry lice claimed your granny.
Ag Shame Lovey was of course also the name of Fassie’s debut solo studio album. It was recorded in 1986 and released a year later. The single Ag Shame Lovey from the album took the biscuit. Kinobe shares that the song became a bar anthem in Uganda and enjoyed huge airplay on Radio Uganda.
Its danceable rhythms resonated with many, including children who often sung it during school speech day competitions. However, there appeared to be no universality when it came to the lyrics. Most people deliberately belted lines in Luganda. Words from the dialect that were not only nearly similar but rhymed with the progression of the song were favoured.
“Suddenly, words would literally sound similar but in most cases they were different and so was the meaning of the original lyrics,” Kinobe recalls.
While omitting a couple of lines in the lyrics, those who mimed the song would alter the verse: “One step forward, one step back (just move your body), turn around and clap your hands (we doing fine now). One step left, and one step right, shake your head and shake your body.”
The words they used were: “Jjajja wo Muteesi wa Lo or Jjajja wo Yafa Bulooro.” These were crooned in tenor, with responses delivered in bass voices.
Fassie went on to become a cult hero in Uganda, with songs like Thola amadlozi and Nomakanjani becoming part of DJ playlists. It didn’t seem to matter that no one had a clue about what the lyrics meant.
Ag Shame Lovey is a song that inspires a generation of talent where Fassie called out children to realise their potential and stand out.
Before her death, Fassie graced Uganda with a thrilling performance that wowed hundreds of music lovers. Besides Ag Shame Lovey, her song Wedding Day is synonymous with Ugandan weddings.
Girlie Girlie
Ekikeesa Kinyuma oli bweleere is another famous title that misrepresents a song titled Girlie Girlie by Jamaican singer Sophia George. The 1986 release that gained popularity in the ‘90s disco revolution is a song that was much loved by Ugandans; never mind that they erroneously replaced its “young man you too girlie girlie” lyrics with something else for their convenience.
According to the music website, Song Facts, the song came about as a result of the song writer, Anthony “Sangie” Davis’s baby mama finding him in the company of a number of schoolgirls one day in Kingston, Jamaica.
She told him off with the admonition: “Why all the time I come around you I just see all these school girls. How you so girlie, girlie?”
The song became a massive international hit, topping the Jamaican charts for nearly 10 weeks and breaking into many other charts.
Though it proved to be Sophia George’s only hit in the UK, she had other Jamaican hits, including Lazy Body, It Burn Mi Belly and Ain’t No Meaning.
Ziqubu’s Ikati
Ikati is another popular song by South African musician, Condry Ziqubu, which was suddenly interpolated to close meaning. Locally sung as Kappa elidde enyama yange, meaning the cat has eaten my meat.
This, it must be noted, is not far from the true meaning of the song’s lyrics. The repeated lines in the chorus are thus: “Lekati lidli nyama yami.” The words in Zulu, loosely translate as: “This cat eats my meat.”
The song is a catchy tune and its repetitive chorus that emphasises the refrain “Lekati lidli nyama yami” with the verse lyrics seem to criticise a neighbour’s cat that keeps stealing the singer’s food, specifically the chicken drumsticks.
The singer wonders what he can do about this problem and contemplates building a fence to keep the cat out but seems to doubt that it would work.
In the chorus, the singer repeatedly affirms his determination to take action by saying: “We kati ithatha ama chance.” This means: “When I get a chance, I will.”
Ziqubu is a Johannesburg-based singer and guitarist who started out with The Anchors, Flaming Souls and Flaming Ghettoes before joining Harari in 1981.
He is best known for his tongue-in-cheek hit song celebrating the claptrap township car, the Skorokoro, but his musical journey extends way beyond his 1980s hits.
Girlie Girlie
Ekikeesa Kinyuma oli bweleere is another famous title that misrepresents a song titled Girlie Girlie by Jamaican singer Sophia George. The 1986 release that gained popularity in the ‘90s disco revolution is a song that was much loved by Ugandans; never mind that they erroneously replaced its “young man you too girlie girlie” lyrics with something else for their convenience.
According to the music website, Song Facts, the song came about as a result of the song writer, Anthony “Sangie” Davis’s baby mama finding him in the company of a number of schoolgirls one day in Kingston,
She told him off with the admonition: “Why all the time I come around you I just see all these school girls. How you so girlie, girlie?”
The song became a massive international hit, topping the Jamaican charts for nearly 10 weeks and breaking into many other charts.
Though it proved to be Sophia George’s only hit in the UK, she had other Jamaican hits, including Lazy Body, It Burn Mi Belly and Ain’t No Meaning.
In the final part of Sung it Wrong, we will explore other songs that saw a Ugandan audience improvise to make what they were listening to more relatable.
