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Language:

Acoli Swahili English

Instrument:

Male vocals Guitar Thumb piano

Biography

Geoffrey Orema's development as a musician will always be coloured by the fact that he comes from one of Uganda's most powerful families. As a child, Geoffrey often sat beside his father in Kampala and heard him play nanga, a 7 stringed harp. His mother was the director of Uganda's national dance ensemble, Heart Beat of Africa. Also, his grandparents and uncles were musicians and storytellers.
Geoffrey Orema learned nanga, thumb piano, and guitar as an adolescent. But his career as a musician was interrupted in the most tragic manner when his father, a minister in Idi Amin's government, was murdered in 1977. Geoffrey was smuggled out to Kenya in a car. Shortly afterwards he moved to Paris and has lived in France ever since. There he again pursued his music career and continued to perfect his technique on thumb piano, nanga and flute. "Music accompanies everything in my culture. There is music for digging in the garden, for interring bodies in the ground; if a member of the government comes to visit a song will be composed about it. This music is not dead; it will never die. It is continually evolving and renewing itself. I often hear music when I fix my computer when it crashes", says Geoffrey Orema. With his dark, melancholy voice he has developed an individual style, built out of traditions from "the clear, green land." The least, few years Geoffrey Orema has however adopted more of a rock consept.

Relevant artists:
Hukwe Zawose
Mradi Group
Samite

EXILE  
Realworld/1990

A very strong debut album from Geoffrey Orema, this. The disk alternates between frenetic thumb piano riffs and slower, melancholic sounds. "Exile" is a gripping musical expression precisely because it was made in exile, with shifting moods, from despair to yearning. Orema sings in turn in Acoli (his tribe's language), Swahili and English. Both Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel collaborate on the disk; Eno's presence is especially felt throughout, but Orema's music is the most important here, as it should be. "Exile" is modern, well-arranged traditional music, with content.

BEAT THE BORDER  
Realworld/1993

More of the same as you find on "Exile". A creative mix of traditional Ugandan rhythms and western "new world-stamped" rock. Maybe the commitment doesn't shine as brightly here, but the gentle, laid-back songs function as least as good as before, and Brian Eno is still a man with creative power. Geoffrey Orema manages to create his own expression, resembling no other African artists.

NIGHT TO NIGHT  
Realworld/1996

Following the two previous strong disks, it seems as though Geoffrey is running out of ideas. He has slipped into idling mode, something for which he tries to compensate by pulling in new elements – accordion, for example. Orema's traditional instruments, thumb piano and nanga, are shoved into the background
and replaced by synthesizer and electric guitar. The result is a disk that sounds more western and, unfortunately, rather mundane. Ali Farka Toure would have said that Orema is in the process of detaching himself from his African roots. Only a couple of songs really seize the music, such as "Passage At Dusk", where the thumb piano and synthesizer arrangement are organically united. This is not a bad album, it's just that Orema is capable of so much more.

SPIRIT
Sonodisc/Musisoft/2000

ODYSSEUS/BEST OF
Wrasse Records/2002

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Swahili: Francis Chagula (francis.chagula@malvik.kommune.no)
Swahili: Habiba Rajabu (habiba@online.no)
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