An island of speakers is installed at the foot of Itanda Falls in southern Uganda. From September 15 to 18, between ten and fifteen thousand people will come to dance on the banks of the White Nile, west of the capital, Kampala.
However, the Nyege Nyege festival almost fell through. Nine days before this flagship electronic music event, where local, African, European and American artists mix, the Ugandan Parliament announced its ban. The Minister of Ethics and Integrity, Rose Lilly Akello, criticized him for “promote immorality”, as reported by the Ugandan daily Daily Monitor.
“Don’t come naked”
The organizers sought to promote the economic and tourist windfall of their event. On Wednesday September 7, the Prime Minister, Robinah Nabbanja, finally authorized it. Behaviors “vulgar” are, however, banned. “Don’t come naked”, then advised, in a stroke of humor, the Twitter account of Nyege Nyege, quoted by the British online magazine Resident Advisor.
The Daily Monitor reacted with the same playfulness. “Parliament deserves an international award for its marketing operation in favor of Nyege Nyege”, quipped the Kampala newspaper. Because instead of hindering the festival, those who sought to ban it gave it great publicity abroad.
A wind of homophobia
The American Channel CNN was, for example, interested in the arguments of the two camps. Unlike the Minister of Tourism, Martin Mugarra, who was delighted to see at least 8,000 foreigners disembark, some parliamentarians encouraged them to stay at home.
The event “will attract all kinds of people from all over the world, which will bring all kinds of behavior that is neither African nor Ugandan to us”, pleaded Sarah Opendi. This deputy, historically opposed to the festival, accuses it of “recruit” its participants from the LGBTQI community.
Nyege Nyege was founded in 2015 by two friends living in Kampala, Derek Debru and Arlen Dilsizian. “They wanted to set up a party that could take on an international dimension”, describes Ugandan daily life Daily Monitor. Their project now includes a label and a studio, which serve as a springboard for Ugandan and, more broadly, African musicians.
In addition to Ugandan queer artist DJ Kampire, an early guest, the festival regularly features South Sudanese Turkana and Kampala DJ Authentically Plastic, who are members of the LGBTQI music collective Anti-Mass. Guests who do not go well with some, in a country where homophobia remains widespread, encouraged by the rigor of a booming evangelical Christianity. Moreover, images of the evenings of Nyege Nyege having circulated on the Internet “have enraged pastors,” reported the site Uganda Christian News in 2019.
In an article published by the platform The Conversation, a researcher at Makerere University, Kampala, seeks to explain “the roots of this distrust of the festival”. “Uganda is a conservative country, based on strict Christian morals, and which has the will to preserve ‘traditional values’”, argues Amos Ochieng. “Homosexuality is for example prohibited in the country, under a law inherited from the British colonist.“Between 2017 and 2020, homosexual relations were the cause of 194 prosecutions and 25 convictions, according to figures from the BBC.
A name with two meanings
According to Amos Ochieng, “the controversy has a lot to do with the name” you festival. “In the Luganda language of Uganda, nyege nyege can be interpreted as an irresistible urge to dance”, does it translate into The Conversation. However, “in the Kiswahili language of the region, nyege nyege is slang for ‘excited’ and is used in the context of sex drive.”
This linguistic ambiguity caused problems for the event from its inception. “Just the name of the festival is a provocation”, said the former Minister of Ethics and Integrity Simon Lokodo, a notorious homophobe. Now deceased, the predecessor of Rose Lilly Akello had sought to ban the demonstration in 2018, recalls the Daily Monitor.
An economic windfall
For Amos Ochieng, the Nyege Nyege festival was saved by the government’s desire to “convert music and its industry into economic resources”. This has been the case again this year. “It’s an event that attracts thousands and thousands of tourists from all over the world, so a cancellation would be complicated,” argued Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja. “We are also thinking about the economy.”
As an expedient, the government has therefore issued a list of seven measures to be respected. Orgies, smuggling, drug trafficking are of course not allowed. Any vulgarity, whether lodged in the songs, the language or the behavior, is also excluded. Finally, nudity is prohibited. Festival-goers are warned.