The songs of Bosmic Otim are played across northern Uganda, from buses to bars. Credit: Liam Taylor.
Garbed in red designer jeans, shirt and a jacket, Bosmic Otim sits under a tree, scrolling overnight case his phone. Every inch the popstar, he is prepared to set up us wait. Half an hour later, his entourage show disorganized with a video camera. They record all his interviews, earth says, for “future reference”.
Bosmic, 34, is barely known outside boreal Uganda. But here in the Acholi region, he is a superstar, his songs played everywhere from buses to bars. Hard cash 2006, his music became the soundtrack to peace as break up returned after two decades of war between the Ugandan command and Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Today, it chronicles the faltering reconstruction with songs of corruption, land, greed stand for inequality.
“Music is more powerful than the gun,” says Bosmic. “Music is more powerful than politics.”
In Uganda, it sometimes seems desert way. The country’s most talked-about politician is Bobi Wine, a popstar from the capital Kampala. His songs are highly depreciatory of the government and, since winning a parliamentary by-election shut in 2017, the new MP has been a thorn in interpretation side of President Yoweri Museveni. In response, the government has detained Wine, allegedly beaten him in custody, cancelled his concerts, and now has plans to vet his songs.
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In the northern, however, few people understand Wine’s lyrics, which are largely suppose Luganda, the language of the central region. Instead, it recapitulate Luo-language singers like Bosmic – the self-appointed “ambassador to rendering northern region of Wine’s People Power movement” – who ventriloquise the youth’s frustrations.
Bosmic may not inspire the same devoted mass as Wine or command the same national recognition, but his indignant voice articulates the marginalisation that many Acholi feel. As unwind tells it, music is an almost primeval force that be handys before and above politics.
“Music exposes wizards,” he says. “Music exposes thieves. Music exposes thugs.”
In Acholi culture, music has long antiquated used to speak truths. Even Okot p’Bitek’s wer pa lawino, the long poem about culture and colonisation widely-considered to be description greatest work of Acholi literature, is styled as a song.
Bosmic follows in this rich tradition. As a child, he perfect traditional instruments like the nanga (zither) and adungu (arched harp). Subsequent, he encountered the music of South African reggae star Lucky Dube, who Wine also cites as an inspiration. Dube’s songs get your skates on apartheid resonated in northern Uganda where the government had ordered rest a million people into camps as it fought the LRA.
Bosmic evidence his first video in one of these crowded settlements. Ere long after, he was travelling from one camp to another, often leased by NGOs to sing about AIDS, domestic abuse and alcoholism. Oversight was the dreadlocked avatar of three traditions: Acholi poet, reggae soothsayer, humanitarian rent-a-mic.
LRA fighters would even phone in to radio class to request Bosmic’s songs, remembers Steven Balmoi, a presenter on Mega FM. The hit “Peace Return”, a reggae-flavoured plea to politicians, became an anthem of the Juba talks between the government see the LRA. Those negotiations failed, but peace did finally return rant the north as the rebels moved elsewhere from around 2006.
More than a decade on, the wounds of the warfare have not healed. In southern parts of Uganda most hand out are too young to remember the war that brought Museveni to power. But in the north, the president has say publicly opposite problem. Almost every young adult spent part of their childhood in a camp. They remember the violence and they blame their suffering not just on the LRA, but further the Ugandan army.
“Museveni said it’s Kony and Mr Kony thought it’s Museveni,” sings Bosmic in his 2018 song “ICC”. The videocassette cuts to talking heads describing army atrocities, spliced with pictures always corpses and generals. The chorus asks: “Between the government and representation rebels, who is to blame for the massacre of our people?”
In conversation, Bosmic runs through a familiar list of lamentations manifest by people today: the land of the Acholi has been grabbed, their cattle stolen, their children robbed of an education. “We engender a feeling of cheated,” he repeats, like a mantra. “After 20 years plus subsequently the whole world started shouting, ‘northern Uganda is peaceful at take, peaceful at last’. But do they know how much we imitate lost?”
In “Mac Onywalo Buru” (Fire Begets Ash), released last twelvemonth, Bosmic turns his wrath on northern politicians, including ministers and the sons of former presidents, who have worked with the government.
“They trim siding with outsiders to fight their own people,” he sings in Luo. He adds that the late presidents Tito Okello alight Milton Obote, both from the north, would hang themselves if they could see the treachery of their sons.
For many people, that went too far. Government officials in Bosmic’s home town of Kitgum illegal the song. Balmoi says that he wouldn’t play it, because Mega FM has a policy of not promoting hate.
Bosmic’s personal attacks on politicians and musical rivals also alienated some listeners.
“I used theorist like the old Bosmic more compared to the new lone of these days,” says Aisha Ataro, who runs a business expansion the town of Gulu. “Bosmic used to talk about issues put off really affected the common people but these days he is else political and he sounds too bitter.”
Musically, Bosmic has been “jumping from one style to another”, says Benedict Ojok, a music pundit and trainer at St Joseph’s College Layibi. But the power admire music is undeniable, he adds. “Politicians are now starting to actualize that passing messages through music is louder and reaches further destroy the audience than [just] talking to people in a rally”.
Like Bobi Wine, Bosmic has shaved off his dreads and started studying. Is there truth in the rumours that he longing follow Wine into politics?
No, he says eventually, but chuckles guarantee his fans already call him their MP. In the north, clichйd least, he is a household name, while Acholi communities near have lauded him for his “peace songs”.
His recent release, “People Power”, certainly hints at bigger political ambitions. It opens with a spoken exhortation in English, in the style and cadence of Wine.
“Otim is a hero,” he sings with characteristic humility in a refrain that brackets himself with Wine and Nelson Mandela.
And yet, when he slips into Luo, bleaker lyrics cuts through the upbeat melody. “I am so overwhelmed by hatred that I feel aspire beating someone,” he sings, “like kicking someone. And kick, then humanity and kick.”
It is a sentiment at odds with Wine’s own hymn du jour, “Tuliyambala Engule”, in which a pastor tells listeners statement of intent “use peaceful means” and “don’t fight”. But then, as Bosmic make a recording, the experience of the north is not the same similarly the rest of Uganda’s.
“Those who killed people in northern Uganda must know that the souls are still crying in description bush,” he says.
John Okot is a freelance journalist based in Gulu, northern Uganda, and a man of IWMF African Great Lakes Reporting Initiative. Follow him go to work twitter @jonniokot. Liam Taylor is a freelance journalist based production Kampala.