France-based Ugandan musician Geoffrey Oryema will come home on December 17th to bring a breath of fresh air to the entertainment industry.
“It is a double excitement hosting Geoffrey Oryema and premiering the Bayimba Honours, you can now imagine my adrenaline,” Faisal Kiwewa the concert organiser revealed.
Oryema’s biggest song on the market right now is Makambo released on Jan 29, 2015 but taken from his album “Exile”, originally released in 1990.
Then West France based artiste is scheduled to headline the Bayimba Honours concert at Lohana Academy along Prince Charles Drive in Kololo. Perfomring alongside Oryema will be fellow diaspora based musical greats Babaluku & KSO plus Julius Lugaya.
In May, Oryema performed in Cannes at A-listed Hollywood actor Sean Penn’s party to celebrate the release of his new film The Last Face. There is a track used in the film, from Oryema’s first album.
Tickets priced at 100,000 ordinary, 200,000 for VIP and Shs3m for a table of 10 available on easyticket.co.ug.
Why he flee Uganda
Talking to Oryema, one gets the impression that he is searching for more than just a musical identity, but the meaning of life itself. After all, his childhood world fell apart one day in 1977 when his father was brutally murdered on the orders of dictator Idi Amin. Up until that day, the young boy had enjoyed a privileged childhood befitting the son of Uganda’s most respected police chief who later became the Minister for Natural Resources. Moreover, Oryema had forged a close bond with his musical father, one of the last great nanga players in the whole of Acholi land. This was where Oryema learned to play the traditional nanga. Then came news of his father’s death announced on public radio. Devastated and only 24-years old, Oryema had to be smuggled in the trunk of a car to the safety of a neighbouring country. Like the fable Greek character Odysseus who begins wandering after the fall of Troy, Oryema was launched into a journey of searching for meaning in music. (interview by Opiyo Oloya)
