Geoffrey Oryema (Uganda)

Hypnotic voice from the great rivers

For the New York Times, he is the “Leonard Cohen of Africa.” Like Cohen, Oryema combines intellect with a voice of unmistakable timbre. While still a child in Uganda, he caught “the musician’s disease,” as Oryema himself has put it. When his father died in a mysterious auto accident under Idi Amin’s regime, Oryema fled into exile in Paris in 1977. Exile is also the name of his first CD, produced by Peter Gabriel, featuring lots of electronics and hypnotic beats.

His songs are often filled with lyrical melancholy, paired with pulsing Afro pop. But Oryema does not want to stand still and be defined exclusively by his origins. So he works with French chansonniers, with jazz musicians, and with Brian Eno, David Byrne, and Lokua Kanza. For him it is always about songs “straight from the heart”: they keep alive the languages of his youth, Swahili and Acholi, and the memory of the “clear green land” near the great rivers.