African Music Development Programme connects East African universities

Two music training universities in East Africa benefited from the project. They are Makerere University in Uganda, through its department of music, dance and drama, as well as the School of Creative Arts and Technologies at the Technical University of Kenya (TUK). Music students from both institutions were selected for exchange visits and work placement at top African music festivals. The students had the opportunity to develop and expand their skills in event management through a two-month internship at leading music festivals from 2015. Two batches of 10 TUK students visited Makerere University for a one-month exchange programme from June to July 2015. About the same number of students from Makerere University then visited TUK from July to August 2015.

The objective of the exchange was to improve the quality of professional training in music and to increase dialogue between different music cultures. Another student exchange between students from the two institutions took place in May 2016, and a few months earlier the students spent two months as interns at various festivals across the continent. This was an opportunity to get hands-on experience in festival organisation and management.

Nicholas Ssempijja, a music lecturer at Makerere University, which boasts the biggest music department in Uganda, describes the project as a great success.

“The AMDP exposed the students to field experiences and enlarged their knowledge from the local sphere to a continental platform,” he said.

TUK music professor Emily Akuno was IMC secretary-general when the AMDP started. “We were looking for students who would be ambassadors for the institution, those who would benefit from the exposure and who also had something to offer,” Akuno, who was elected the first ever female president of the IMC in June 2017, said.

The AMDP selection process of students at both universities was highly competitive, and the Kenyan students who spent a month at Makerere, such as well-known opera singer Maryolive Mungai, were able to develop a deeper appreciation for traditional music.

“We teach Western principles of music and African music styles,” Ssempijja said. “African music faces the risk of dying if we don’t teach it at our universities.”

The Kenyan students were introduced to Ugandan traditional drumming, popular music and dancing styles like kisimba and mwanga.

“Even when Ugandans play contemporary jazz, it is grounded on their traditional music,” saxophonist Simon Kariuki said. Kariuki was studying for a music diploma at TUK in 2015 and spent a month at Makerere the same year. He also played at several gigs with fellow students in Kampala.

Students from Makerere themselves were able to sample the diversity of traditional and contemporary Kenyan music at the 2015 Kenya National Music Festival in the city of Kisumu. This was only the first time in more than 80 years that the festival was held outside Nairobi. “They were able to view performance from a different perspective, especially production,” Akuno said.

Ssempijja said his students who participated in the project had been able to utilise the knowledge they acquired in practical ways.

Aloysius Migadde, who was an intern at the Lake of Stars Festival in Malawi, is today one of Uganda’s most in-demand guitarists and plays with many of the country’s top bands. Many other students confidently expanded the boundaries of the music they came into contact with through improvisation. Japheth Owuor Blasto of TUK was able to experiment by combining the orutu, a traditional stringed instrument from western Kenyan, with band performance. Carlos Mwangi, who was attached to Sauti za Busara festival in Zanzibar, has been able to introduce the saxophone into traditional taarab music.

Michelle Bisonga had a video camera on her during her internship at Le Kolatier Festival in Cameroon and was soon posting music videos on YouTube. Today, she has become an Internet sensation thanks to her videos in which she sings mash-ups of old-school hits by Kenyan artists.

Edmund Obila, who spent two months with the team at the 2016 edition of Shoko Festival, Zimbabwe’s biggest urban culture gathering, was assigned to the Hub Conference. He worked with various Zimbabwean youth groups in preparing their profiles and marketing their events at the conference, which takes place alongside the festival.

“I picked up useful skills like setting up a website and using social media tools to promote my music,” he said. “Academically, I gained experience in preparing my project which was a critique of contemporary Kenyan music.”

Obila has just graduated with first-class honors in music from TUK. Interacting with artists from around the world at the festival also gave Obila a new focus for his own career. Obila, who plays saxophone and piano, shared the ideas and experiences with his bandmates in a group called Hybrid Sounds. They now know which sounds to employ to get onto international platforms. While in Zimbabwe, Obila found various opportunities to play the saxophone every Sunday at a gig organised by jazz musicians in Harare. He also learnt how to play the mbira (thumb piano) and in return introduced the musicians he played with to the music of his community, the Luhya of western Kenya. 

Reflecting on the impact of the AMDP, Akuno says it provided training for music students by equipping them with the relevant skills. She said the networking between students and musicians from different African countries was also a major benefit of the programme.

Through the project, the library of the TUK music department was stocked with sound equipment, computers and 57 music titles. The TUK music programme was developed in 2011 and started a year later. Students with prior music industry experience are able to enroll for studies from certificate level and work their way to postgraduate degrees.

However, Akuno says festivals are not designed as teaching platforms and so it could have been a challenge for the event organisers give due attention to the interns. “The festivals have limited resources and time available for them so it was never going to be easy to expect them to devote much time to the students.”

Ssempijja shared his own experience during a trip to Malawi’s Lake of Stars. “The festival organisers were unsure of what to expect from the students so I spent a lot of time at the start explaining to them what this project aimed to achieve,” he said.

Akuno said that in future such challenges could be met through a workshop for all partners to develop a work plan, manage expectations and improve the level of preparation.

But what is the sustainability of the obvious advantages of the AMDP? Makerere University and TUK have been grappling with how to make the activities of the project part of their academic curricula. TUK has, for instance, targeted internships so their students can gain professional experience with various music industry practitioners – from producers and engineers to event organisers and marketers.

Undoubtedly, the AMDP has offered invaluable lessons in bridging the gap between vocational training and the music industry.

This article was published in partnership with the African Music Development Programme