“What I have learned from myself is that I don’t have to be anybody else. Myself is good enough.”
LUPITA NYONG’O
I have in the past couple years of my life and journey been registering and perceiving notions I was taught, either deliberately or experientially to exhaustively dismiss with respect to being me; a girl, and now a woman. I had never grappled with the truly existent tensions of being female. Yes, I grew up with brothers and for the larger extent of my life, had male friendships more proximate in preference than female ones but nothing ever made me feel or stirred within me the feeling of “difference”; different from, different than, different to. If it was concerning popular boy sports like playing soccer, or basketball, I could and I did. Academically, we were regarded in the same brackets and incidentally, it was never that hard keeping up, having enough to draw from in that matter. I could be anything I wanted and take the steps necessary to be that thing. I could attain anything I wanted so long as I worked hard for it. I looked around and there were plenty of female role models. I always imagined I’d be a doctor, until I didn’t meet the academic preliminary prerequisites. After that, I just attended the rest of secondary school passively involved in an artistic growth, that kind of completely caught me by surprise.
When you look at the surrounding factors however, it’s possible to see how everything eventually comes together to who I know myself to be now and what I do. When I had to choose a career at the beginning of University therefore, it was easy and it was hard. I knew I just wanted to do something I could be creative with- something my mind could run free and just as it believed itself to be. The hard part was what. Of course, a music course was something attractive and something I seriously considered (a music Technology course to be exact) but for worse and for better, that’s not what I studied for my undergrad. I studied the law; and a lot or might as well be everything about it caught me off guard as well, but that’s another story. The point is the cumulative summation of that part of my journey and more leads me here to today and now. The well know order- be born, study and then become, still has me lost with who I am and who I am to become 27 years later. So here I am. Yes. I became a lawyer, with a post graduate diploma in legal studies. But I also became an artist who debuted her first ever album months ago and most especially; a woman scared shitless. How do I be myself? How can I be who I feel I am? Where to begin? How to execute? No one left a handbook. I look around myself and through history for people who look like me doing what I want to do? Is it just me all alone figuring it all out? It seems do. Yes. It definitely seems so.
For those that have known me, beginning my artistic career was a stumble in the darkness. I had no idea what I was doing. I tried to think about what I wanted to do and every feat processing, resolved with the same conclusion: I have no idea what I am doing. Even as I explain past projects and the like to others, it’s so hard for many to follow. So many projects, why don’t you yet have the traction most artists would have by say, their third project? Why haven’t I ever heard or listened to your music? Are you sure you are doing music seriously? And on and on and on. I feel so little after questions like that, in contrast to how big and “enough” I feel when I’m writing and planning and in my creative process. Questions etching and cementing doubt and hesitation within and without. All I know is there is something in me so loud, I’ll burst if I don’t say it and furthermore, I know it in my bones, someone else is supposed to hear it.
Therefore, Chaotic Heart the EP in 2016, beginning with the singles, “I’ll be Waiting” and “Beat Again.” They were songs about a season, about life; the sole most exclusive source of all my creative inspiration. But something about this time in life was a beginning. I had never felt the need to record and share music, but as soon as this season and I invaded each other in principle, understanding the seriousness of what was and what was to come in all its subsisting intricacies, what I had to do was clear. I had to divulge what understandings were coming to life for me. So, without any knowledge that recorded music needed to be mastered, or mixed, or have album art, or needed credits for who produced and what not, a release processes, I put it all up on Bandcamp and Soundcloud. Of course, the feedback I got was basically, “Don’t do that again” but even then, the debut singles set me on a trajectory I didn’t imagine my music would travel. I had said what I needed to say and I felt the weight off myself for a bit, a little pressure released to relieve me of the restlessness. But life is seldom lived quietly, voices scream their truths that by some design sound in us and only us and we are disturbed into a prepossessing madness that we become dependent on to express. Creativity in some dimension we live is synonymous with expression and that was that; another project, another EP. Bronte was released in 2017 doing the same thing its predecessor had done invading my spaces until all its subsisting intricacies spewed like *insert something that spews* Two more 3ps later, Bronte the 3p and Caustic Romance had us in the middle of 2018. Then begun the preparation for Little Grown Up Child, my debut album and currently, a very good summation of the psychological evolution and devolution of myself from child to grown up.
So, there I was. Here I am. Being a lawyer. Working a regular job in a law firm, giving legal advice and most of what that entails for where I am right now to reasonable expectation. But also, being an artist and doing what most artist do, record and release music, perform once in a while and case in point, spilling all their confusion into some form of expression like this blog post for example. But guys, the question is still as unresolved and as novel as it was when I probably pondered it first; what in the actually heck am I doing.
Some have coined “singing lawyer” as a seemingly definitive title for me. But like more accurate would be “singing-mothering-lawyer-creative.” When you ask me to compare myself to someone existent or describe who I want to be this is it:
I want to be an African female Matt Healy. I want to write and feel like Jon Foreman. I want it to be okay for me to write songs as sad and dark as those written by Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker. I want sounds as grim as those of Daughter and as eclectic as “Midnight City” by M83. I want to be as relatable and sophisticatedly simple as Elly Wamala and as confident sexy as Sheebah. I want to grow a Ugandan audience. I want to reach the world. I want to be as influential as Emily Jane Bronte; remembered after I’m gone and I didnt even need you to know who I was, but as determined as Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be as big and capable as I imagine myself to be. I don’t need to be as big as Beyonce, or as legendary as the Beatles, but definitely as respected as Dylan or Cohen were. Like an African Bon Iver that does more pop than alternative indie folkish stuff.
Can I do it? Maybe I can, maybe not. But maybe because I try, someone else can be their own amalgamation of confusion like me writing all this. Someone like my son. Someone like the next “singing-mothering-lawyer-creative.” That’s why I have to share this even when I’m sure, no one cares for blogs that much anymore unless they are teaching you how to add headings to a table of contents in a 60 page word document, or telling you why your Android phone won’t start even though it was on charge all night. (iphones are a better life, I swear.)
So welcome to a new stage in this journey of myself, as we (if you’ll join me) sojourn and discover what it is I know myself to be irrevocably.
I am a Ugandan. That connection to this country and my place in it is something very important with what I have been given. I am an artist. I shall forever be creating, singing, writing and whatever I can till the day I die.
I am a Ugandan Artist.
Now join me to explore what that means.
Definitely gonna be a bumpy ride.
augandanartist.com 