Biography
Albert Ssempeke, a vocalist and kadongo kamu player also known as a performer on the small guitar, keeps the musical traditions of Uganda’s Baganda people alive. In 1988 he joined his band Aboluganda Kwagalana—every member of which, like Ssempeke himself, holds an appointment as a royal musician to the king—to record the album Ssempeke! at Edinburgh University, preserving Buganda’s pre-independence royal court music. Eight years afterward he set out on a two-year tour alongside Ganda drummer and dancer Samuel Bakkabulindi. Near the close of that tour Dr. Janet Topp Fargion recorded an interview with Ssempeke and his son John for the National Sound Archive of the British Library, exploring the place of tradition within modern Ugandan music.