Ebyevugo as repositories of ethnic identity among Bakiga immigrants in Rubirizi, Uganda

Abstract

The Bakiga of south-western Uganda boast a unique type of music and dance known as kizino. Manifesting itself as an assemblage of unique dance music genres including enanga (trough zither dance music), ekizino (dance song) and kakitaari, or omukuri (flute dance music), there are also ebyevugo (plural of ekyevugo), which are recitatives involving the use of rapidly sung speech. This article adopts qualitative research methods such as interviews, focus group discussions and document analyses to examine how Bakiga immigrants in Rubirizi District, western Uganda, archive their ethnic identity through ebyevugo that precede, or are performed in the middle of this dance. I analyse the texts of two ebyevugo to show how the Bakiga immigrants use them as a platform to collect, store and transmit information about place, clan systems, totems and ancestry. I argue that by ensuring that ebyevugo as an aspect of kizino are sustained, Bakiga immigrants in Rubirizi keep crucial information about their ethnic identity, which is also transmitted from one generation to another through the performance of this genre of music. Despite the changing sociocultural and religious contexts of these immigrants, there is a need to uphold the performance practice of ebyevugo in settings like Rubirizi to sustain the transmission of information about Bakiga immigrants through such alternative means of archiving.