maxiewawa

Listen to my musical composition for today here. Or watch it here.

There’s an interesting story behind today’s tune. It’s not mine though, so I won’t bother telling it.

Callum Macrae of the BBC does a much better job of it than I ever could; he has made a documentary about the civil war in northern Uganda. The synopsis is that a militia leader called Joseph Kony has been raping and pillaging that part of the world, and forcing children participate.

While listening to the podcast of the documentary, I heard part of a song written by a blind Ugandan about the war. Although I couldn’t understand a word, and only heard a few seconds of it, it grabbed me. I haven’t copied it exactly (I couldn’t from the few seconds I heard) but suffice it to say that I didn’t have an original idea when it came to this little tune, all of it was taken from the Ugandan musician that played it on BBC’s podcast. Can you hear how the fourth of the chord part is a little bit sharp? Even that was his idea.

If you want to hear the original, have a listen to the documentary podcast here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/7609324.stm

The original tune comes in at 20 minutes into it. Don’t let that put you off, it’s an interesting podcast.

I called the tune “Free Uganda” because I couldn’t think of anything particularly profound to say, but thought I should mention Uganda.

Listen to my music here: http://media.libsyn.com/media/maxiewawa/Free_Uganda.mp3

The original podcast is here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/7609324.stm
(Click on “listen” to do just that, or “Podcast” to subscribe to it.)

Hope you like the tune! The whole explanation has been quite depressing, but I just in case you thought I pulled this composition out of thin air I thought I’d explain how I came up with it.