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Send us your review:
Describe the atmosphere and live music at a local pub, restaurant, festival, church or temple, club night.... inspire other people to check it out!
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Musician: Joseph Nsubuga
Location: London
Instruments: voice, guitar
Music: Ugandan / East Africa / Rumba / Kiganda
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HOW I CAME TO THIS MUSIC听听听听听听听听听听WHERE I PLAY听听听听听听听听听听A FAVOURITE SONG |
  
Listen to Joseph and fellow-refugees perform with
Eliza Carthy at
The Home of Black Websites |
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 听听Listen (8'07) to Joseph Nsubuga and Impala perform 'Byaffe' with Joseph on vocals and lead guitar, Betty Nsubuga on vocals and Jayesh on percussion.
听听Listen (8'00) to 'Mandela', performed by Joseph Nsubuga and his band, Impala.
听听Listen (2'55) to Joseph talk about his music.
Where I play:
 Together with my wife, Betty and our band, Impala, we play two African community dances twice a month - at the Eagle and Child in Forest Gate, East London and at The Classic Club in Tooting Bec, South London. While we mainly attract a big Ugandan crowd, we also have Nigerians, Congolese, Angolans and South Africans. We start around 10pm, things hot up around midnight and we go on till dawn. Everyone's welcome.
We're passionate about reviving live East African music here in the UK. I'm sad that a whole generation have lost out on musicianship because all they want to do is play records disco-style. It's my dream to expose this melodious African music to the widest possible audience.
 We also play the London-Asian circuit for weddings and private parties. That's fun because the Asians love a good celebration. It all started one day at home, when our Asian neighbours heard us practising a song in Swahili. They originally come from the Asian community in Uganda so they were thrilled to have the chance to speak Swahili again. They encouraged us to learn some Asian songs as they rightly predicted that the Ugandan Asian community in the UK would enjoy it. They even found us our first venue - a small Asian pub. We played a big chunk of African numbers which went down fairly well but once we started on the Bollywood songs, the entire crowd jumped up to dance. We eventually built up a repertoire of 30 Bombay film songs and toured round the UK playing at Asian events.
Now, I never thought I'd be performing to an all-Asian audience never mind be singing in Hindi. But the audiences are always really responsive and keen to meet us back stage so that they can chat in Swahili or recall places back home. We get a great kick out of it all! Relations are good between us and the Asian community despite the difficulties they had in Uganda back in 1972 when Idi Amin gave them 90 days to leave the country.
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