In 2025, Afrigo Band will make 50 years. Half a century of priceless music that has transcended generations.
This month, the band released a new video for Yantamiiza, a song off their 2019 album Teri Mubi, in what seems like an attempt to move with the times and connect with the millennial audience.
The trick that keeps Uganda’s longest-lasting musical group together even when dynamics in music taste have changed dramatically over the last four decades, remains a mystery.
One would also argue the answer lies in the fact that the band has weathered so many storms and as such, attained a certain level of resilience.
A recent account by vocalist and alto saxophonist, Moses Matovu, who leads Afrigo Band attests this resilience. The glory that the group basks in was not always obvious from the get go.
Matovu’s intimacy with music goes back to his childhood. At home, he used to operate the gramophone.
When he later joined Namirembe Primary School and Kibuli Demo Primary School, he was in the school choir as a singer. He did covers of Elvis Presley, Jim Reeves, Elly Wamala and Toffa Sebaduka.
His studies get disrupted by the attack on the Lubiri ( Buganda kingdom palace) during Kabaka Mutesa II’s reign in 1966. A Senior Three student at Pillai S.S where he was on a scholarship granted by the Buganda government, Matovu could not proceed with school.
A year later, the 18-year-old joins a music group known as Thunderbirds who used to perform in Katwe. At a then popular hang-out called White Nile Club, they played on weekends for teens. Thunderbirds’ stint at the club was short-lived.
The Management at the club stopped the group because they had no musical instruments. The grey-heads will tell you those days, if you loved some Congolese and rumba sounds played live on band while you unwound, White Nile was the spot.
Thunderbirds had been using equipment belonging to the night club’s resident band.
All this while, in his teen years, Moses Matovu had his passion in two places – music and football. When his chances with school ran out, he bet all his cards on singing and playing football. That’s how in 1968, he joined the Police band and Police football club, but he wouldn’t last there long too.
Relentless and teeming with ambition, he joined another music band ‘Cranes Band’ where he was a singer and also played drums (congas).
In Cranes Band, Matovu would join Charles Sekyanzi, Tony Senkebejje, Bosco Bumozi, and Sam Kauma who was band leader. The others were Eddy Ganja, Jese Kayirivu and Joseph Mungaya.
“We got a contract with Silver Springs Hotel to play from Tuesday to Saturday. In 1974, Cranes Band decided to stop the band from playing but the rest of us decided to continue with music. We got some people to support us buy instruments,” recounted Matovu, 72, recently while speaking on a Twitter Space session hosted by Robert Kabushenga.
It’s this pursuit to continue with music, amid a rift within Cranes, that birthed Afrigo Band.
In 1975, Matovu together with Charles Sekyanzi, Tony Senkebejje, Jese Kayirivu and Jeff Sewava (as first Manager) created Afrigo band.
“We couldn’t use the Cranes name. We had to get a new name. We named it (new band) Afrigo band,” he said.
A music band but not quite. All they had were the vocals and talent. The group spent a full year without equipment, an experience that relates well with message in their Olumbe lwobwavu hit off their 1994 album Mp’ eddembe.
“We stuck together hoping we would get a sympathizer.”
This was about the time then President, Idi Amin, had expelled the Indians from the country. Indians had been the pulse of trade and industry. There were two shops (owned by Indians) along Kampala Road that sold music records and equipment like guitars, drums, microphones and the like.
“Nobody could run that business after Indians. We had to wait until we got a gentleman, the late Leonard Mugwanya, who was the Secretary of Uganda Electricity Board (UEB) and owner of Bat Valley Bar and Restaurant. We talked to him to allow us to play at his bar. But we had no equipment,” Matovu shares.
Mugwanya asked the group to find the equipment and that he would avail them the funds to purchase it. And they got lucky.
Uganda was preparing to host the Organization of African Unity (OAU) conference in Kampala in July of 1975. It so happened that Uganda Hotels was putting much of their music equipment up for auction.
Afrigo selected what instruments they wanted and reported to Mugwanya. The equipment cost them about Ushs 25,000 at the time (approximately Ushs 30m today).
They found a new home at Mugwanya’s Bat Valley Theatre where they played from Thursday to Sunday.
President Idi Amin was a music fan. He loved entertainment and dancing. There are several accounts about his passion to host parties. At his residence in Munyonyo, there was an entertainment spot called Cape Town Villas where Afrigo did gigs on the weekend.
According to Matovu, a friend of theirs who got them the Cape Town Villas gig would later tell them the President had heard the band play and had loved their vibe.
“We went to Mugwanya and asked that he lends us the equipment until we can procure our own. We spent 4 to 5 months with the equipment. The President’s Office called us and told us they had bought new equipment, we went to Cape Town Villas and played Tuesday to Sunday. The music sound was great, people were many.”
He adds that the band was exclusive to Cape Town Villas and presidential guests. Even when they got approached for gigs out of the country, they couldn’t go.
April 1979. The war breaks out and Idi Amin is overthrown. All the equipment that Afrigo has been using is part of the collateral damage. Matovu and peers are back to having a thin time of it.
But they have seen this movie before, and they are not beaten up. They regroup and again, some good Samaritans come through, thanks to the good vibes they’ve been serving to music lovers all this while.
October of the same year, they start playing at Slow Boat Restaurant (along Kampala Road) Saturday and Sunday starting 2pm. The curfew imposed following the political instability means they must close the show by 6pm. Slow Boat was frequented by civil servants in the Amin and Milton Obote governments.
“We were there (Slow Boat) for 2 years. Then we moved to Kidukulu (Amber Hotel). When we left Cape Town Villas, people started to hire us for private parties and weddings,” Matovu recounts.
It wasn’t until 1983 that Afrigo settled and had their own studio in Kibuli where they did rehearsals. All this while, the band is doing covers and a few of their originals but they have not recorded.
This is because “there weren’t good studios here”, Matovu says, and the exclusivity that Amin had on the band barred them from moving to Nairobi where better studios were, to record.
Matovu expounds on Afrigo’s relationship with Idi Amin, in an exclusive interview with Plugged.
“We were under the President’s office. We were under instructions. We couldn’t ask them. They only dictated whatever they want,” Matovu told Plugged in a follow-up interview.
Cape Town Villas was a bar and restaurant facility which also had some cottages.
However, its owner would later disappear (allegedly kidnapped) by elements in Idi Amin’s regime. Amin then took it over and placed the facility’s management under the President’s Office.
Afrigo played both at invite-only occasions for Amin’s guests and for the public (guests who came to Cape Town Villas to have a good time).
“There were many occasions when we played for the President. It depended. Sometimes, we would go to State House, some times we went to Nile Hotel (presently Kampala Serena Hotel) and sometimes we would stage it there (Cape Town Villas). It was up to the President’s choice and where he wanted the function to be,” Matovu told Plugged.
A lot was going on in the country at the time, and some have described Amin’s as “a reign of terror”. He was authoritative. Most times he took unilateral decisions against those that he did not agree with.
Matovu admits that playing when Amin was in the audience was nerve-racking.
“When the President is around, you have to be very careful. With time, we got used, but we had to bear in mind that we were under President’s Office, so, the order should be there.”
Besides sports (he was a heavyweight boxer), music was very close to Amin’s heart. He played the accordion mostly with the Simba Battalion (of the military) which was based in Mbarara.
Matovu recounted to Plugged, occasions when Amin had particular songs he wanted Afrigo band to play, when he was part of the audience.
“He used to bring some cover songs, so that we could rehearse. One day, he brought a song called Kasongo by the Super Mazembe (a popular Kenyan-based band that played Lingala (Soukous) music), and we played that song. I personally wasn’t interested in that song, but I had nothing to do. I had to do what he wanted,” he said.
One would think that these circumstances (being exclusive to the President) cost the band since it meant they couldn’t play anywhere else. Not quite. Matovu says the band members were paid a monthly salary for their service.
“We were comfortable in terms of payment.”
Each member was paid individually at the end of every month. Personally, Matovu used to earn Ushs 600 each month, which he says was good money considering the Ugandan Shilling had value at the time.
Not that they didn’t make some sacrifices. This arrangement delayed their recording. President Amin had asked Afrigo to compose educative songs about Uganda. But they explained to him that for this to happen and for the public to access these songs, they (Afrigo) had to go to studio and record.
“He told us that one day, we shall go to Nairobi to record, but this didn’t happen. He was later overthrown in April of 1979. This is how we left Cape Town Villas. All the equipment had been looted,” the band leader told this website.
Five years after its formation, Afrigo band takes a trip to Nairobi for their first recording session.
“It wasn’t all good because we hadn’t mastered the art. Our first good recording was when we went to UK,” he told Kabushenga.
The UK trip had been made possible by a colleague of theirs, Hope Mukasa, who had been exiled in Sweden. Mukasa had bought good equipment and set up a studio in Sweden. And that’s the studio from which Afrigo would in 1989 recorded the Volume 8, Afrigo Batuuse album.
“We were lucky songs came out well and were mixed in Sweden. Everyone liked that album. It helped us breakthrough.”
With the album’s success, the bands visibility suddenly precedes them. They get booked in the UK by African Cultural Promoters who take Afrigo on their maiden UK tour.
Matovu says whenever they were in London, the band made sure they recorded an album. That’s an album every year.
“That’s how we broke out and became a phenomenal.”
“We went to Denmark for Images of Africa Musical Festival. There, we recorded an album too. Our quality kept going up.”
Twenty-three albums and over 200 songs later, Afrigo band has seen it all – headlining major festivals locally and playing on several stages across the globe.
Over the years, some band members have left and others died. The prominent members today include Moses Matovu himself, Joanita Kawalya, Racheal Magola and Herman Sewanyana.
The list of their fans’ favorite hits includes Afrigo Batuuse I, Olimujja Wa, Nantongo, Amazzi Genyama and Speed. Others are Jim, Tony, Obangaina, Nkoye and Ndikwambala Ng’ekooti.
A fan who attended their 40th anniversary concert in Kampala in 2015 recounted his fond memories to The East African, of the band’s popularity back in 1996 when they played at Ggaba Beach. The fan said Afrigo’s shows always sold out, sometimes with a 200 per cent turn-out. This forced their fans to buy tickets for the next show a week in advance.
Over this four-decade music journey, their circumstances were not rosy but one attribute underpinned their ethic – never getting comfortable. In hopping from place to place including Kasisira (now Crested Towers), Bat Valley, Kisajja (Entebbe Road), Little Flowers and Club Obligatto, Afrigo had ambitious goals.
The other attribute is discipline.
“Rehearsal and practice are important. On my own as a saxophonist, I try to practice five days a week. Because there are so many things that we still don’t know. Practice enables you to perfect the keys,” the band leader says.
Adding; “You have to put in more effort. Give practice 4 or 10 hours. That way, the rehearsals are flawless. When we started, our fans used to criticize us constructively. A fan would tell you ‘That song you are trying to copy, if you can’t play it perfectly, leave it’. We played for audiences who knew what good music was. They gave us the challenge. That helped us to not take offense but rather go back to the drawing board to improve and deliver better.”
Popular perception has it that keeping music groups together is an uphill task, and rightly so. Often times, egos and personal interests tend to creep up.
For Afrigo, it’s been the principles and commitment.
“Everyone has a contribution to make and everyone gets their credit. Nobody is above the band rules. When a new member joins and finds that culture of discipline, it will be difficult for them to act otherwise.”
At a personal level, Matovu has been deliberate at keeping physically fit by regularly playing football in addition to abiding by a nutritious diet regimen which keeps him immune to illnesses.
