Examines how the Kawuugulu Clan-Royal Musical Ensemble uses musical
performance and storytelling to manage, structure, model, and legitimize
power relations among the Baganda people of south-central Uganda.
Tuning the Kingdom draws on oral and written accounts, archival
research, and musical analysis to examine how the Kawuugulu Clan-Royal
Musical Ensemble of the Kingdom of Buganda (arguably the kingdom's
oldest and longest-surviving performance ensemble) has historically
managed, structured, modeled, and legitimized power relations among the
Baganda people of south-central Uganda. Damascus Kafumbe argues that the
ensemble sustains a complex sociopolitical hierarchy, interweaving and
maintaining a delicate balance between kin and clan ties and royal
prerogatives through musical performance and storytelling that
integrates human and nonhuman stories. He describes this phenomenonas
"tuning the kingdom," and he compares it to the process of tensioning or
stretching Kiganda drums, which are always moving in and out of tune.
Even as Kawuugulu continues to adapt to the rapidly changing world
around it, Tuning the Kingdom documents how Kawuugulu has historically
articulated and embodied principles of the three inextricably related
domains that serve as the backbone of Kiganda politics: kinship,
clanship, and kingship.
Winner of the 2020 Kwabena Nketia Book Prize of the African and African
Diasporic Music Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology and Honorable
Mention for the 2019 Ogot Book Prize of the African Studies Association
Damascus Kafumbe is Assistant Professor of Music at Middlebury College.
