Ethan Musoke: From medical school to The Voice Africa

What are the chances that, if you recorded a video of yourself singing and uploaded it to a website, you would be selected for a televised singing competition even though you have no prior performing experience?

On a good day, the chances are close to one; on an ordinary day, none.
Yet Ethan Musoke may be that Ugandan who ran away with a close to zero chance when he recorded a video and submitted it for The Voice Africa, through the Airtel portals at the end of 2022.

That was then, and early this year, he was one of the seven Ugandans who made it to the blind auditions in Nigeria. 

Singing Labrinth’s Jealous, Musoke sang his lungs out, from the opening verse to the harmonies completing the performance, and yet neither Awilo Longomba, Lady Jaydee, Yemi Alade, nor Locko turned.

For a show such as The Voice, built around the famous Voice Of Holland, that is an elimination. The show’s format usually has contestants audition before judges or mentors that are not looking at them, when your voice impresses them, they press a red button to turn their chairs to see who is performing.

Thus, the show gets its name from the fact that the contestant’s voice must impress the judges.

Auditioning
Musoke says his choice of Labrinth’s Jealous was because the song suits his voice. But anyway, that was probably not meant to be their day.

“I remember the day that episode was shot, it rained heavily, and production had to stall for hours,” he says.

With production being halted as it rained, the mood certainly changed, and tension built. When the first guy went in, Paul Kachala from Malawi, he did not get a single judge to turn.

“That guy was so good, he performs in England and is basically the guy who was leading vocally on our journey to these auditions. When he never got a turn, we thought, What is the criteria?’ We wondered, ‘What are they looking for?” Musoke says.

When someone most of us thought was so good failed to get judges’ chairs turning, the mood deteriorated, and people became scared. But people were also rooting for each other. Having stayed together for some time, they had bonded and, thus, wished the best for each other.

“You should have seen what was happening backstage—the community that we had built, we were shocked,” he says.

Clad in a black shirt, matching trousers, and a white jacket, Musoke walked to the stage and started belting to the English electronic artiste’s 2014 hit. Jealousy, off the Keep Calm and Cool Out album.

Contrary to popular belief, the song was in fact influenced by one of Labrinth’s parents, who left the family when he was only four years old. The song is a heartbreaking ballad that digs into the emotions of the performer.

The song is popular with talent shows, having been performed on The X Factor, American Idol, and The Voice, among others. 

Labrinth, he says, is his kind of music, but he has grown up listening to different types of music such as Ugandan pop and gospel. 

“In fact, one time, a coach during an impromptu session, asked each of us to sing a song in their mother tongue, you can imagine the chaos. But I did Pastor Brain Lubega’s Nungamya.”

When Mukasa performed the song, it must have become even more heartbreaking, especially when no one was turning and he still had to sing on.

“You always have very little time to impress, so a lot kept going through my mind when no one turned,” he says.

Often, on such shows, people who fail to get a judge to turn, tend to try out impromptu tricks, improvising and going off their earlier planned performance.

“Singing is emotional, when you sing at first, you have hope, the more you go without people turning, the more the morale goes down. When no one turned, I thought of turning things up, but then again, you may end up screaming,” he says.

At the end of it all, when he was done with the performance, he walked off stage and had to wait for his flight back to Uganda.

First timer
There were moments of uncertainty over how long they would stay in Nigeria. It’s at that time that the emotions started running through; “For instance, when I was back in the hotel, I started asking myself many things like, “Where did I go wrong”, There was a Nigerian friend of mine on the technical team, and I remember asking him how I did, and he said not as good as the rehearsal.”

Before Musoke, however, was on the African screen auditioning with Labrinth’s song, he says he had not really performed before.

“Of course I had performed in school, but that was almost it,” he says. 

Before his appearance on The Voice stage, he had only held a microphone once.

“In school, I had been part of a choir, I had led a song. It was the first time I held a microphone, the second time was on The Voice.”

But his journey was unexpected, for instance, he says he lives with his grandmother, and yet it was only last year that she, along with other family members, knew he was taking music seriously.

Then, he was a medicine student at Kampala International University’s Ishaka Campus when he first noticed Airtel and thought of giving it a shot.

“So I recorded a video of myself singing, and I struggled to upload it,” he says.
If he wasn’t struggling with data bundles, he struggled to have a video at the right time, thus ending up recording many videos.

“I recorded myself eight times; some of my videos were too long or too big,” he says, adding that at that time, what he looked for was the right tone or his best sound. He initially recorded the videos for the sake of trying them out.

“I did it and thought about it as one of the things you do to forget,” he says. 
In fact, he says when he learned that more than 5,000 Ugandans had auditioned for The Voice, he noticed how lucky he was. 

“When I was in Nigeria, the guy told us that about 5,000 Ugandans had auditioned, and I was thinking, what are the chances? Had I known 5,000 Ugandans were going to audition, I wouldn’t have auditioned,” he says.    

Out of these, about 50 were called back for a second audition; Musoke was one of them, and later, seven were selected to represent Uganda.

“When I was there waiting to be called in, I met a girl  who was there to audition, we became friends and started talking. That girl was Sharon Kyolinako, she was seated next to me, and almost a month later,  she is the one  who called me and asked me to check my email because she had received hers,” he says, wondering that two random strangers could meet and end up making it to the competition.

These included Musoke, Ronny Ssemujju, Sharon Kyolinako, Charles Ssekitoleko, and Desire Tusiimire, who is still part of the show.  Desire beat Madagascar’s Rina Arifenitra, the earliest season favourite, to get all the judges turning. However, when the two artistes from team Awilo faced off, singing Christina Aguirela’s Beautiful, Desire was the last girl standing.

What next
After The Voice Africa, many things have changed for Musoke. 

At the time of auditioning, he was studying medicine, and he says he loved it because it felt like the right thing to do. Yet, now that he was doing it, he noticed there were challenges, especially financial problems.

After the competition, he says he has a number of contacts and that his approach to music will change. But he insists school is still the priority, considering the fact that it was only in 2022 that he told his parents he wanted to do music.

“Right now, I am looking at many options, I might be switching to study law, because, even when I passed and managed to study medicine, I have always been an arts guy” he says.

For music, he says he will definitely not stop writing music; “I will still do music, I know I did not get a turn, but that showed me that I may not have been ready. At the moment, I have access to a studio, but I still want to take things slow. I feel like I have been rushing through this music thing.

Just imagine it was last year when I told my parents that I wanted to do music, and the next thing I was on the stage of The Voice Africa.  I want to take things a bit slow.”