After the great success of our 2nd Annual Kakuma Sound Cultural Festival this past June, Kakuma Sound’s original All-Star Band will be joining with our sisters and brothers from the Kyaka Refugee Settlement for our first International performance, at the famed Nyege Nyege Festival, this year taking place at the literal source of the Nile in Jinja, Uganda. Special thanks for Derek Debrou and the amazing staff of NN, as well as to UNESCO, UNHCR, Amnesty International, and Africa Express/Roskilde Foundation for funding and support to make what is the first time ever a refugee-camp led traditional music group has performed at a major festival, never mind internationally. Always one of the must-see events of the annual African festival circuit, this year’s Nyege Nyege Festival will have even more power as it takes place in one of the most beautiful and historic locations on the Continent. For more information please visit the Festival home page. If you’re in Uganda and want to go but it’s completely sold out, please contact Treynor Tumwa at treytumwa@gmail.com.
We are equally excited to be joining together with three internationally renowned organizations for a project focused on harnessing the power of music and the arts more broadly to create pathways for generating and empowering what we term “creative infrastructures” in the United States, Africa and globally: UC Irvine’s renowned Blum Center for Poverty Alleviation; the Collaborative Media Advocacy Platform (CMAP), founded by Oscar-nominated, Harvard Loeb Fellow Michael Uwemedimo and one of the most important and innovative grassroots arts, advocacy and planning-from-below organizations in the world (click here for its amazing radio, web, film and music projects); and Yole!Africa, founded by renowned Congolese filmmaker and KS Board member Petna Ndaliko Katondolo, home to the celebrated annual Ishango film festival (which hosted KS co-founders Treynor Tumwa and Mark LeVine this past June). Petna is completing a documentary about the women of Kakuma Sound titled Kakuma is Kakuma, which has already screened in rough-cut at several international festivals to acclaim. Stay tuned for more information about the official release date and more festival screenings for the film.
As Blum Center founding director Richard Matthew explains, “This partnership will mobilize the Blum Center’s historic focus on collaborating with vulnerable communities to develop sustainable pathways into a radically climate-altered world. The combination of art, science, and technology represented by our partners is critical to connecting peoples across different cultures towards a sense of shared fate and purpose, and inspiring and enabling action towards new visions of the future.” Check back soon for more detailed information about our partnership and our “Creative Infrastructure Hubs” being established at each organization. For more information, email blumcenter@uci.edu.
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