Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Obituaries
- Introduction by Yvette Hutchison
- Looking for ‘Eritrea's Past Property’ (1947)
- Seeking the Founding Father
- Medieval Morality & Liturgical Drama in Colonial Rhodesia
- Contesting Constructions of Cultural Production in & through Urban Theatre in Rhodesia, c. 1890–1950
- ‘Don't Talk into my Talk’
- The Leaf & the Soap (‘Bí ewé bá pẹ́. l'ara ọṣẹ, á di ọṣẹ ’)
- The Representation of Khoisan Characters in Early
- Images of Africa in Early Twentieth-Century British Theatre
- The First African Play: Fabula Yawreoch Commedia & its influence on the development of Ethiopian Theatre
- Translator's Note
- Playscript
- Book Reviews
- Index
‘Don't Talk into my Talk’
Oral narratives, cultural identity & popular performance in colonial Uganda
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Obituaries
- Introduction by Yvette Hutchison
- Looking for ‘Eritrea's Past Property’ (1947)
- Seeking the Founding Father
- Medieval Morality & Liturgical Drama in Colonial Rhodesia
- Contesting Constructions of Cultural Production in & through Urban Theatre in Rhodesia, c. 1890–1950
- ‘Don't Talk into my Talk’
- The Leaf & the Soap (‘Bí ewé bá pẹ́. l'ara ọṣẹ, á di ọṣẹ ’)
- The Representation of Khoisan Characters in Early
- Images of Africa in Early Twentieth-Century British Theatre
- The First African Play: Fabula Yawreoch Commedia & its influence on the development of Ethiopian Theatre
- Translator's Note
- Playscript
- Book Reviews
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Performance in colonial Uganda was dominated by dance and song, although individual technical mastery of dance, song, and instrumentation was a prerogative of the professional performers and court musicians who played at the royal courts, beer parties, and market places. There are limited written materials available on indigenous performances of the colonial period in Buganda. However, the existence of a corpus of archival Luganda musical recordings, going back to the 1930s, and oral narratives of aged people, gives us an insight into performance activities of this period. Old musical recordings help us to understand various forms of performance about which we know little, and contribute to aspects of performance that have shaped contemporary Ugandan theatre. Popular performances of the colonial era allowed the Baganda indigenous culture to indulge itself, therefore, they have become a memory bank where everything, economic, social and political is presented. Ian Steadman in his article, ‘Towards Popular Theatre in South Africa’, insists that any evaluation of archived indigenous performances ‘must be sensitive to the complexities of performance which are inscribed therein, complexities in which surplus meanings are produced and often subvert the meanings intended for the reader of the printed text’ (1990: 208).
It is from this approach to an embodied archive, with performance central to the analysis, that I am approaching the following examples of colonial theatre in Uganda. In orientation and performance, Serumaga's Majangwa (and Kawadwa's Oluyimba lwa Wankoko (1975)), offered re-interpretations of indigenous theatre in order to challenge oppressive systems whose policies impinged on people's freedom.
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- Information
- Histories 1850–1950 , pp. 72 - 89Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010