It’s great to see how Ugandan artists are creatively going about putting their music out in recent times; from pre-release explorations, to the actual drop, onto community-themed audience infiltration. To appreciate the scene’s progress in that regard, we’d like to track back a bit, but not too far back as to lose a point of common reference.
Remember those unimaginative, tacky, conceptless “album launches” of yesteryear? How about the promoter-centered dissemination that would have artists bending backwards to legacy media gatekeepers for a chance at initial play? The stagnation & directionlessness of it all! Good riddance, well, for the most part!
There’s now a crop of artists letting their juices bubble wildly, and attaching a deeper layeredness to the rollout of their output. Certainly not due to the lack of other examples (but for purposes of an on-going perfectly framed reference), we’ll exemplify the concept with the lead-up to a highly anticipated upcoming album dubbed “Rwebembera” by Afro-R’n’B artist Kohen Jaycee [concept snippet pictured below]
For his full length effort, Kohen Jaycee has put out some impressively cohesive concept notes about the significance of elements within it, a sign that he’s attaching a conceptual weight to the project. It’s not just some all too familiar patching up of thematically dissimilar pieces to get a temporal rouse from the listener. And It’s not only limited to the communication of it: Even the curation of his support roster, on the collabs that are out so far before the album, demonstrate a thoughtfulness both in choice and sonic fitness for the contexts they’re utilized in. Thick gravy!
But that’s only pre-release. Let’s zoom out & forward to a more general outlook. There’s now all these release parties, suavely curated performance series & out-of-the-box promo campaigns floating about it. You love to see it!
Yet even momentarily exciting ideas, once replicated over extensive periods of time with no imaginative twist, can rob a concept of the optimal effect of the spirit that birthed it. On that note, we’d like to suggest some thought patterns that can go a long way in sustaining this recent creative mojo around release cycles:
First, the power of a concept, a word that’s abounded in this piece by no mistake. And we’re not even talking about artists going all out & making a bunch of super-intricate concept albums. Though, to be honest, that too is very welcome. Because whereas concept albums are derided now as self-indulgent in places like the EU & the US, the idea is virgin and even non-existent to us. But that’s a topic for another day. Point is, assign an overarching concept to a project, no need to be too stringent about it, but just as a promotional and memorable anchor. Then secondly, lean into online commentary (positive & negative) as promo ammo. In other words, re-package it by highlighting it for visibility’s sake in the lead up to other projects. This is made a bit hard by the fact that we have no aggregated music critic sites, the equivalent of Metacritic, globally, that puts together all ratings of an artist’s projects into an average, like a Ug Rotten Tomato of music (if an entertainment entrepreneur is reading this, here’s a generous idea for free!) And lastly on release, think of imaginative ideas to accompany a rollout; say a docuseries of the recording process, a mobile release party, or visual art collabs in addition to the music itself on release. This is just to get y’all’s minds moving, it’s not a be-all guide. Nuff said!
To end on a more chill point, we’re all looking forward to Kohen Jaycee’s aforementioned “Rwebembera” project on the 30th, and below’s pictured the album art to get y’all a tad more psyched!
We can’t wait!
