Moses Matovu the saxophone kingSome musicians leave songs behind. A rare few leave a musical institution, a generation of disciples and a vocabulary through which a country continues to remember itself. Moses Matovu belonged to that exceptional class. His farewell is therefore not simply the closing of a musician’s career; it is the passing of one of the principal custodians of Uganda’s modern live-band tradition. Born on June 19, 1949, in Kawempe, Kampala, to Abdallah Bukenya bin Adam and Solome Nakitto, Matovu encountered music almost before he encountered professional life. He sang in the Namirembe Cathedral Choir from childhood and entered professional music with Thunderbirds Band in 1967. He joined the Police Band in 1968 and the Cranes Band in 1969. In 1970, he recorded ‘Jimmy Saasira’, one of his earliest original compositions, about a woman abandoned by her husband with their children and appealing for his return. In November 1975, following the collapse of the Cranes Band, Matovu joined TPaul Serumaga, Jef Sewava, Charles Ssekyanzi, Anthony Kyeyune and other musicians in establishing Afrigo Band in Kampala. Contemporary accounts identify the original formation as a group of eight young musicians. The name Afrigo has commonly been explained as an expression of “Africa go”, capturing the founders’ ambition to take African music forward. Their early performances developed a distinctive blend of Congolese rumba, jazz, funk, Ugandan traditional rhythms and folk influences, predominantly through Luganda, while also embracing other Ugandan languages and Kiswahili. The first gig was performed in 1975 at Bat Valley, the venue now associated with Club Obligato, which subsequently became deeply connected with Afrigo’s identity. The historical importance of that decision cannot be overstated. Uganda was entering one of the most turbulent periods in its post-independence history, yet a group of musicians was constructing something whose lifespan would ultimately outlast governments, political crises, changing musical fashions and several generations of performers. Afrigo became a cultural institution. The early years were anything but easy. Afrigo lost equipment during the upheavals surrounding the fall of Idi Amin and was forced to rebuild. Yet the musicians returned to the stage and eventually established themselves at venues such as Little Flowers on Bombo Road, where the band experienced one of its most important revivals. By the late 1980s, Afrigo had undergone significant personnel changes, recruited new musicians and rebuilt its audience. Its ability to regroup after musicians departed was one of the clearest demonstrations that Matovu had helped create an institution rather than merely a personal brand. This is where the next generation becomes indispensable to the story. Joanita Kawalya joined Afrigo in 1989, while Rachael Magoola joined in 1989. They were considerably younger than the founding generation and represented the first major generational renewal that allowed the band’s identity to travel beyond its founders. Kawalya became one of Uganda’s most recognisable female band vocalists, while Magoola became a singer, composer and performer whose work extended well beyond Afrigo. Eddie Yawe, Frank Mbalire, Sammy Kasule, Herman Ssewanyana, Godfrey Mwambala, Rashid Musoke, Charles Busulwa, Julius Nshaba, Daniel Kaggwa, Jacinta Wamboka and Sarah Namiyonga were among the musicians and performers associated with different periods of Afrigo’s long journey. The personnel changed, but the institutional DNA survived. The significance of Matovu’s leadership lies partly in this capacity for succession. He understood that an institution survives not by keeping its founders permanently young, but by continually making room for musicians who were not yet born when it began. The songs Afrigo sang were not all written by Matovu, and that distinction is essential. Afrigo’s greatness was collective. The catalogue associated specifically with Matovu’s songwriting includes “Jimmy Saasira”, “Katonda Yakola Omukwano”, “Emiziro”, “Ekadde”, “Sofia”, “Nantongo”, “Sirina Anantwaala”, “Teri Mubi”, “Genda Osome” and “Afrigo Batuuse I”, among others. Each illustrates a different facet of his artistic imagination: family responsibility, faith, culture, memory, beauty, love, education and institutional identity. His contribution was, therefore, not simply the production of catchy melodies. It was the conversion of ordinary Ugandan experiences into durable cultural texts. The 2019 album Teri Mubi offered perhaps the clearest demonstration of his philosophy of musical continuity. The 11-track album placed new material alongside older compositions, including “Emiziro”, which had originally been recorded around 1970 with the Cranes Band. The old composition was reconstructed with saxophones, keyboards, percussion, drums and a more contemporary arrangement. By the band’s golden jubilee in 2025, its history represented five decades of Ugandan popular music, from analogue live performance and physical records to the digital streaming era. The band’s influence also travelled beyond its own personnel. Afrigo helped sustain the live-band model at a time when Uganda’s popular music increasingly moved towards electronically produced and programmed music. Its insistence on singers, saxophones, trumpets, guitars, bass, keyboards, drums and percussion provided an alternative musical education to generations of performers. Its long-running presence helped demonstrate that Ugandan music could be professionally arranged, instrumentally sophisticated and commercially viable without abandoning local language and cultural identity. That example contributed to the continued revival of live bands and encouraged musicians who wanted to perform rather than merely mime to recorded tracks. This is perhaps the strongest argument for describing Afrigo as a national cultural institution. The band became bigger than its stars. There is something deeply moving, therefore, about musicians from different generations gathering around the memory of the man who helped hold their institution together. At his vigil, the gathering of musicians could be understood as more than a funeral assembly. It was, in a profound sense, a reunion of Uganda’s musical generations around one of their principal architects. In that gathering, Afrigo’s history was no longer an abstract chronology. It became human. Moses Matovu’s legacy is therefore larger than the microphone he held, the saxophone he played or the songs he composed. It lies in the institution he helped establish, the standards he defended, the musicians he mentored, the generations he connected and the distinctly Ugandan musical language he helped carry beyond Uganda’s borders. The saxophone has fallen silent, but the sound has not disappeared. The writer is a lawyer, researcher, governance analyst and a Master of law student in Natural Resources Law at Kampala International University alexatweme@gmail.comThe post Moses Matovu’s saxophone has fallen but the music of a nation will not appeared first on The Observer Media Ltd.