{"id":41503,"date":"2019-09-03T16:08:25","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T14:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/dj-kampire-on-the-rise\/"},"modified":"2020-09-28T11:10:13","modified_gmt":"2020-09-28T09:10:13","slug":"dj-kampire-on-the-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/dj-kampire-on-the-rise\/","title":{"rendered":"DJ Kampire, on the rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The young Ugandan DJ, signed to the label Nyege Nyege, has become the darling of the biggest electro music festivals. PAM met up with her this summer in Arles, at Les Suds Festival.<\/b><\/span><\/h4>\n

If the Ugandan scene is currently booming, the label and festival Nyege Nyege, based in Kampala, are not for nothing. At the heart of the collective \u2013 whose primary objective is to highlight the electro scene in Uganda and more widely in East Africa \u2013 is Kampire Bahana aka DJ Kampire.<\/p>\n

Born 32 years ago in Kenya, this young woman grew up in Zambia before going to graduate school in Ohio, USA. Today, based in the Ugandan capital, she first performed in 2015. Since then, the performer who admits to having \u2018started to play a little by chance, for my friends, my community\u2019 is constantly surprised at being paid to play. And yet, from New York to Shanghai and from Sonar (Spain) to the Dour Festival (Belgium), DJ Kampire is conquering the world. On the menu: euphoric DJ sets mixing her dad\u2019s favourite Congolese dance music with electro sounds from all four corners of Africa.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Uganda, freedom to gather and the freedom to express oneself is limited. In this context, it is hard to imagine how the Nyege Nyege Festival was born five years ago and continues to flourish. How do you explain that?<\/b><\/span><\/h5>\n

Uganda has this reputation for being very conservative but it\u2019s also a very liberal place. It\u2019s a place where people come to party. Kampala is the party capital of East Africa. Entertainment is one of the biggest and most free space in Uganda.\u00a0<\/span>In a way, it seemed that Uganda was the only place where something like Nyege could happen because it’s a special place. A lot of Kenyans and other East Africans come here to party because of that reputation. We have lots of nature and such beautiful people who are very welcoming and we love to dance and party and, up to a point, we\u2019ve always had the support of the security services in Uganda. We\u2019ve also always had tourism in Uganda. However, there are definitely people who have made it a political platform to champion these very conservative points of view and religious fundamentalism.<\/span> But fortunately, Uganda has a very diverse society.<\/span><\/p>\n

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