Richard Kawesa: A musician full of ideas

At 17, Maurice Kirya met Richard Kawesa. Kirya was a best friend to Kawesa’s young brother, Drake Asaba. As such, he would spend nights at Kawesa’s mother’s house.

Kirya recalls the first time he saw him. “He was wearing camouflage cargo pants. He was holding files and by the look of it, you could just see he was onto some kind of mission. His brother then introduced me to some of his work. I had no idea that only three years later we would work closely together,” Kirya recollects.
Kawesa’s initial interest was in music but later on, he realised that he could use music to fulfil more than simply entertaining folks.

At 10, he had travelled to the US and Canada. There he had the chance to stay in different homes.
Along the way, he was exposed to the back end of the glorious image of the western world where immigrants suffered and lived lowly.
“So from that time, I had to face three questions. One was if God gave me 60 years to live, what is my relevance?” he asked himself.
As he pondered his legacy, he was quite unsure where to start because the work would be a lot and he was literary a nobody.

“I did not have parents whose names could open doors for me. I had to talk about me not in relation to education or status. That was a reality check,” he recollects.
As a boy, he was inclined towards older people for friends. “While in S.1 at Nyakasura School, all my friends were in S.5 and in S.6. Older people found value in what I said,” he recounts.

He was a boy who teachers liked because he was smart but got with often because he was stubborn. To calm the angry voice within, he decided to become part of the school choir.
This also drew him close to the Lord as he fostered his dream of fine-tuning his vocal abilities. Before long he was the leader in the choir.

“I realised that I could also use my ability to sing. It was also a tool to carry my message, a strategic door opener to the king’s palace and if I got into the king’s palace, then I could share with the king my relevance beyond music,” he explains.
At school and at home in Masajja, off Entebbe Road, where he stayed with his mother, he sang and rehearsed every day. His father was in the military for his first 10 years.
And when adolescence set in, he took his first bold step and formed a music group called ‘Revival Flames’, while at Nyakasura, whose biggest highlight was performing at King Oyo Nyimba first birthday celebrations.

In a way, the question of where he would begin on his mission was partly answered. From that day on, he became very serious with his music and it took him a year to get signed by Kelele Records, a Germany-owned record label based in Nairobi. He had just completed his Senior Four exams.

With Kelele, he did and released his first album titled Yelele, which is still sold globally.
Yelele was produced in 1998 and he followed this up with Spirit of Africa in 2002, Kanimba in 2006, Tula Mela in 2009, and I am Uganda in 2011.

He defends cutting his musical teeth in Nairobi saying, it was a more cosmopolitan and dynamic city.
He took a year’s break from school as he ran around chasing his music dream, though at the back of his mind was the urge to go and finish his studies. He decided to use part of the Shs16m he had earned, after signing his contract with Kelele, to pay teachers to coach him.
He later registered and sat his Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) at St Mathias Kalemba Secondary School, Nazigo.

But from the time he released his debut album, everything he did was to try and answer questions about Africa. His music spoke about the spirit of Africa.
In effect, he had started himself on a journey to cause social change in Africa though he later realised that Africa was complex given the different aspects that define the continent.

“I started moving backwards into Uganda. I needed to understand myself in the context of Uganda and thus the project “I am Ugandan’ which I launched in April 2010,” he explains.

“I am Ugandan” is one of the latest projects by Kawesa. But he did not start it just the other day. He says he had done similar projects since 1999 and argues that they have had an impact on society.

His first project was in Tanzania before he returned to Uganda to kick start the “Operation Stigma” project on which he partnered with Unaids. A lot of messages at the time aimed at portraying the threat of the HIV/Aids scourge in a threatening manner.

“…for me, it was about a campaign that could go deeper and play with behavioural change. I code-named it ‘the value approach’,” he recounts. This run between 2000 and 2002.
In 2003, he embarked on ‘Musicians Community’ where he worked with musicians to do work beyond simply music and performances.

A year later, he rallied corporate companies, artistes and civil society on a campaign to help people in northern Uganda at the height of the insurgency by rebel leader, Joseph Kony.
He called the initiative “Three hours away”.
“I realised we had left the issues of northern Uganda to the politicians and the military. I wanted people to realise northern Uganda was not so far away. This project was to create a sense of public responsibility in finding solutions from a civil point of view.”

He did this with music stars. Kawesa was looking at taking a risk of crossing Karuma Bridge to take music stars to children, women and men to this region to inspire hope.
He adds, “When we got there, we slept on the streets with them. Kony, on one of the nights called the late Colonel Walter Ochora and asked him ‘what are these kids doing here?’ He then told the colonel that he loved Chameleone’s music.”

Beyond sleeping on the street, Chameleone, Kawesa and crew, bathed children in the Internally Displaced Camps (IDPs) and also took new clothes for them.
The campaign culminated in ‘Christmas in August’ which even caused a jam on the Gulu highway, whose roads had overgrown with grass.

He then moved on to appreciate soldiers in a campaign he dubbed “Foot soldier”, which gave then Colonel Nathan Mugisha’s battalion a party. “We had about 300 crates of soda, cut about 15 cows and more and it was all good. There were a number of high-ranking soldiers as well as foot soldiers who were happy.

I recently met Gen Aronda Nyakairima and he has asked when we can throw another party and we laughed it off,” the 36-year-old musician says.
His name is behind other projects like Donate a concert where an artiste would donate a concert for a good cause. He is also the man behind bringing in Hugh Masekela for the “Music with Heart” to raise funds for further open-heart surgery to be carried out through Hope Ward at International Hospital Kampala (IHK), in 2007.

He also came up with Zamani which was a celebration of live world music. His “I am Ugandan” project sought to bring out the patriotism in Ugandans. Under this, he organised the Uganda Youth Convention.

“We got a job stimulus. Syda Bbumba was the Minister of Finance and she came to see how they could help and that is how they started the job stimulus project. We were kicked out when the resources were availed,” he adds about the results of one of his latest projects.

City yange
Along the way, Kawesa realised more often people will refer to countries by their capital cities, like USA being referred to as Washington or Uganda, as Kampala.
From this, he realised the Kampala City Yange project under which he rallied city folks to clean Kampala and its suburbs every last Saturday of the month.

But soon, the politics of the city’s leadership gave it a quick fold. “The politics between the KCCA Executive Director, Jennifer Musisi and the Lord mayor Erias Lukwago killed it. The children could not bring the parents together. We wanted to have a partnership with KCCA to mobilise people across five divisions to clean the city,” Kawesa explains.
“It was getting a little funny,” he says.
“KCCA (later) created another programme called Keep Kampala Clean.”

When I ask him how much follow-up he has done for the wonderful projects he has initiated, Kawesa says that it is like asking Usaid how many they have followed.
He says, “They normally do five years and roll out new programmes.”

He explains, he believes in self-help and he is not always singing to put money in these projects. But he is willing to carry the weight to the maximum. With such a spirit, he wakes up every day to push harder.
“I keep the spirit of what I am trying to do. I push and motivate the community until they believe in something,” he adds.

Last year as Uganda celebrated 50 years Kawesa, former Tusker Project Fame winner Estar Nabaasa and other featured artistes Barbara Kayaga, Richy and Hum Kay brought us the jubilee song.

It was the theme song for the celebrations as Uganda celebrated 50 years of independence since colonial master Britain left Uganda’s administration to her.
Yoga Yoga Uganda was recorded at Fenon Studios, mastered at MMX Studios in Midrand South Africa and the project was managed by Kawesa’s Spirit of Africa Ltd.

His latest project is a book titled How to become a Music Star, which he says offers personal memoirs with an in-depth music industry step-by-step guide. He will be launching the book this Wednesday which will be preceded with a debate under the theme “How to become a music star”. But he is not chasing communities only. He will lend a shoulder to an individual or two like he did for artiste Bebe Cool when he was starting out back in 1998. He had seen him perform at the Buju Banton concert the same year.

Bebe says he met Kawesa again at Sabrina’s Pub, along Bombo Road in Kampala, where Kawesa promised to help him.

“He promised he would take me to Nairobi where I was able to break out as an artiste,” the reggae artiste recalls. “Bebe Cool was excited,” Kawesa recalls. “When he came to Nairobi, I connected him to Sync Sound Studios. Then, they connected with Red San and he used to stay at his house. Then Chameleone comes because Bebe Cool felt that if Kawesa had done it for him then he had to do it for someone. Bebe connected Chameleone and they used to stay together,” he explains about how the two local music giants, Chameleone and Bebe started out in Nairobi.
Soon he was meeting more artistes. In 2002 he met Kirya who was struggling for a break through. Today, Kirya still looks up to him

“He is a visionary, he thinks out of the box. There can only be one him for a fact. He has had so much experience in music from African Children’s Choir around the world, to a big sensation in Kenya, to setting a platform for world music in Uganda, he is a King in his style,” Kirya says of Kawesa.
Richard Kawesa has five albums to his name. He was born in Entebbe Grade B hospital near the fire brigade. He explains, “They knew a ‘hot kid’ was being born, on May 5, 1977,” he jokes.

His father Kaddu Bagenda is a retired army officer and his mother, Rose Bagenda, retired civil servant who used to work with ministry of works and was retrenched. She is now into private business.

Besides conventional performances, Kawesa has to his name award-winning movies like Last King of Scotland and the First Grader to which he has provided scores.

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