Philly Bongoley Lutaaya - Empisa Zo (Best Karaoke Video HD)

Описание: Empisa Zo, forms part of the songs on the late great Philly Bongoley Lutaaya’s hit album ‘Born in Africa’ released in the late 80s. This song and its accompanying album, recorded at B10 B10 studios in Sweden in the same period, is still a favourite in Uganda over fifteen years after it was released. According to Dr Alban Nwapa, the Nigerian-Swedish musician who made his musical mark with Denniz Pop a few years later, Lutaaya was one of the greatest African musicians of the 80s.

Unfortunately, the world purely out of his tragic demise did not get to fully appreciate the man and his works as his life was cut short in December 1989 before a logical conclusion of an otherwise promising international (globally recognised) music career. Alban who released a song and album (his fourth) coincidentally titled ‘Born in Africa’ in 1996, was an Afrocentric medical student who graduated into a professional dentist and was equally a disc jockey who had successfully transformed into a musician. Alban occasionally met Lutaaya at the Kilimanjaro Club, Stockholm where the latter performed with the Savannah band in Stockholm Sweden. Alban in the proceeding years was based at the Alphabet Street Club in Stockholm.
In Uganda, Lutaaya is eulogised and his legacy continues as a surrogate patriarch of Ugandan contemporary popular music who is still envisaged as an eternal legend with works (especially the afro-reggae single ‘Born in Africa’ and the poignant ‘Alone and Frightened’) that are local classics. His work as a renowned anti-HIV/AIDS activist fostered a dual legacy and throughout the western hemisphere, it is this point that he is remembered for. Fondly referred to with reverence as ‘Omugenzi Philly’ (the late Philly), he is a guiding beacon to the careers of many musicians in Uganda.

Phillip Bongoley Lutaaya was born in October 1951 (a year before Ignatius Musaazi formed Uganda’s first political party Uganda National Congress) to Mr Tito and Mrs Jastin Lutaaya in Mengo (the seat of the Buganda Kingdom from where he hailed), Kampala was literarily born into urban life. Buganda was at different times referred to as Buganda province interchangeably with the central province and was the headquarters of the British administration before independence. Philly Lutaaya started school in Mpigi District a few kilometres from Kampala where he did a primary section at Kasaka Primary School, Gomba. Gomba is also the ancestral home of Philly Lutaaya and forms one of the three counties that form the district of Mpigi in the Buganda region.The others are Mawokota and Butambala.Lutaaya’s parents were teachers. His dad taught at Kasaka Boys Primary School while his mother was a headmistress at the neighbouring Kasaka Girls Primary School.

After this period, 1959 he was enrolled in Budo Kabinja Junior School in Kampala. He spent a couple of years till 1969 before moving to Kololo Secondary School in Kampala. He got involved in high school bands before breaking out to seek a professional career. At Budo, Lutaaya studied with the late great Ugandan-Rwandan guitarist Dede Majoro who at one point influenced the incorporation of the lead guitar into the Ugandan soundscape. It was at this early stage that the two artists attained their first contact with Western instruments like the piano and the guitar which they never separated from till their demise. Many of the Christian-run schools of the day had high school bands. These included Namilyango College, Kings College Budo and St.Mary’s College Kisubi.

At the age of seventeen, Lutaaya like many of Uganda’s popular musicians got his start as a nightclub band singer. The clubs are cited by acclaimed musician Fred Kanyike Buwule (1989) as a base where musicians can play as residents and present some kind of security of consistency for the musicians. Which implies security of income and career. Lutaaya revolved around New Life Club (Mengo), Kololo Night Club (which was not far away from his former high school, now known as Angenoir Discotheque) and Arizona Club (Kibuye), and at these locations, he still paid particular attention to the guitar revolution of the Congolese rumba and Afro Jazz traditions that were doing rounds in East Africa at the time. His Other influences came in the form of popular rock ‘n’ roll stars Elvis Aron Presley, Cliff Richard (aka Harry Roger Webb) and The Beatles (Paul James McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Richard ‘Ringo Starr’ Starkey). In 1981, he named his newly born lastborn child John Lennon Kabogoza after the Beatles member. Robert Mayanja, a former member of Elly Wamala’s ‘MASCOTS’ band where Philly sojourned at one point Lutaaya used to commence his rehearsals with a rendition on drums and vocals of the Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ single which he loved.