By GILBERT MWIJUKE

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In the 2000s, Washington Ibangit was Uganda’s most sought-after music producer. Ibangit started his career when he was a teenager, playing the piano at Reconciliation Ministries, a church run by his father, who is a pastor, in Soroti, about 400 kilometres east of Kampala.

While in Kampala in the late 1990s, his former high school teacher, Nicholas Mayanja, who was then the lead vocalist in First Love, one of Uganda’s most popular boy bands at the time, prodded him to pursue a career in music production, as there were just a handful of music producers in the country at the time.

After a few misses, Ibangit in 2001 teamed up with Robert Segawa, a more experienced producer, to produce Bobi Wine’s breakthrough hit, Kagoma, which turned out to be a huge hit in Kampala. It’s Kagoma that launched both Bobi Wine’s and Ibangit’s music careers.

The budding producer would go on to produce more hits for Bobi Wine and other popular Ugandan musicians and, by the mid-2000s, he had produced songs for almost every popular Ugandan musician and a few others from abroad, including Nigeria's P-Square (You and Me) and Wizkid (Don’t Cry), General Ozzy from Zambia (Potential) and Kenya’s Nameless (Salari).

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In Uganda, Ibangit is also known for producing hits such as Gold Digger by Jackie Chandiru, Talk and Talk and Ngenda Maaso by Radio and Weasel and Fire Anthem featuring Uganda’s Bebe Cool and Kenya’s Nazizi and Wyre.

Afrodongo sound

In 2005, he enlisted at Galo Records in South Africa for a four-year course in sound engineering to master his trade. But, upon his return to Uganda four years later, new popular producers such as Paul Kiwuuwa, Paddyman, Didi and Daddy Andre had taken over.

“I became a nomadic producer,” he says.

He embarked on international tours around the continent to popularise what he refers to as Afrodongo sound.

He has toured Rwanda, South Africa, Burundi, Zambia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, the Netherlands, and Denmark.

“Dongo means the drum in Uganda and Afrodongo is African music based on the drum – a cocktail of African music styles,” he explains.

“Even though Nigerians are considered successful Afrobeat musicians, the music they are doing right now borrows heavily from Afrodongo.”

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“Nigerians can invest up to $2 million in studio equipment, which is not the case in other African countries. They are successful because of sound quality,” he says.

Ibangit says that his big break came in 2015, when someone connected him to President Museveni, for whom he recorded and produced a presidential campaign song titled Mpenkoni, which loosely translates to “Give me a Walking Stick”.

“Meeting the President and recording a campaign song for him, with himself as the singer, was the turning point of my career. That experience opened many doors for me,” he said.

Mpenkoni went on to become a hit song, but not because the singer was talented, but because he was the president himself trying his luck at singing.