On the streets of Mbale, Uganda, Robert Mugamba has spent almost 15 years peddling CDs to those who pass by. CDs of music from the Domandana Kadodi Performers — not your average percussion roadside players.
Now, coming down from the high of their groundbreaking (and shaking) festival earlier this year, the indomitable Nyege Nyege Tapes is bringing the percussive ritual music of Kadodi to the world.
Kadodi features four tracks separated into two distinct parts. The first two recordings are straight from the streets of Mfumba Village, recorded live takes of effortlessly complex percussion along with shouts and hollers. It’s ritual music, designed to induce the performers into a trance state, “readying them to transcend from boyhood (basinde) into men (basani).”
The second half allows two hugely influential East African electronic producers (Eastern Uganda’s Sun C and Tanzania’s Bamba Pana) to reimagine the Kadodi rhythms in a modern club atmosphere.
From Nyege Nyege Tapes:
“Placing ageless ritual music alongside its club antecedents, the results find tradition frictionlessly reconciled with modernism, drawing bridges between tribal identities and ancient belief systems, and clubs as contemporary sites of ritual enactment.”
You can stream this rhythmic document down below — and pick up your own copy, telling the story of ritual spaces from streets to nightclubs, over at Nyege Nyege Tapes’s Bandcamp page.
Kadodi tracklisting:
01. Recording one (Domadana Kadodi Performers)
02. Recording two (Domadana Kadodi Performers)
03. Kaad 4 (Sun C)
04. Bamba Pana - Wateranga (Domadana Remix)
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