Katokye (UGA)

An a cappella musical chronicle with a spiritual dimension from Uganda's cattle-herding region — John Katokye (vocals) and Rujeru Samuel (vocals). Katokye blends epic stories, improvisation and spirituality; his singing is accompanied not by instruments but by human voices. As a child he ran away from home, travelled western Uganda collecting local stories and melodies, and today is one of his homeland's most popular singers — he released his first album only shortly before his sixtieth birthday. A solo voice sings a phrase, an accompanying voice answers and gently elaborates it, confirming its validity, and the whole draws listeners in hypnotically through its balance of repetition and inventive variation — methods echoed in Christian, Jewish and Sufi trance singing, though not as fusion but as their historical common root.