Recently, 29, aka Afrie’s song Gusula Wano, which features Kenneth Mugabi, has been making waves due to its unique appeal and rhythmic flow.
Her documentary film Little Faith won the best documentary film award during the Uganda film festival, and she is a four-time runner-up for the Afrima awards, among other nods.
Quick Talk caught up with her recently.
Congratulations on your Ggulu album! Tell Quick Talk more about yourself.
Thank you! My name is Ann Nassanga though most people know me by stage name, Afrie. I am a musician, award-winning filmmaker, girl education advocate and the African Union CIEFFA ambassador for the #AfricaEducatesHer Campaign.
Great! Your song Gusula Wano is doing very well. Would you say this is the best song off this new album?
My album is still too young and it is still too early to tell. I can say this is the lead track off the album, but we knew when we did the song with Kenneth Mugabi that many people would love it; it is a love song and had a really good producer – Wake [who is also her husband] – and the song has a hook that gets the listeners’ attention.
What is inspired Gusula Wano?
I really value friendship. I think it is the SI unit for any relationship and when I was writing this song, I was just really celebrating friendship, to be honest.
The song stemmed from the thoughts I had about a few friends of mine and we had gotten out of touch but for some reason, that feeling of friendship was still strong.
That’s why I called my song Gusula Wano, meaning no matter where we go, the friendship lives in my heart.
So, what type of musician would you say you are?
I don’t have a box for myself; I just drive out of my soul and spirit. I may wake up and sing a song that falls under the soul genre, which is well and good, though I started out as a rapper.
Is Ggulu your debut album?
It is my debut album. Before that, I had been releasing EPs and singles.
Why did you call it Ggulu?
I didn’t plan to do the album at the beginning; I was just trying to discover who I really was; it was an identity search and a journey of finding that person. There is heaven within us, and that’s why it is called Ggulu [Luganda for heaven].
Do play musical instruments?
I would like to say the voice is an instrument, but I am proficient in playing the piano. I also play the thumb piano, the akogogo, the flute, saxophone… But in all those, I use the piano to write a lot of my music.
Besides the 12-track Ggulu album, how many Afrie songs are out there?
Honestly I don’t know how many songs I have released. The Ggulu album will have 12 songs, the Afrie Freedom EP has seven songs, I think; and S.I.S EP has more than seven songs. I have others that are not released yet.
Did you originally set out to do music?
For me, my music journey wasn’t the cliché story where people just head out to become this kind of musician. But if I look back to my education days like high school, I used to be interested in lots of science-related subjects.
I went to university and studied Dental Technology. So, my background is pretty science-based. The journey to start doing music came out of a dark season of my life; the only way I could release what I was feeling was through music.
For some reason, the first attempt to sing was by opening my mouth and whatever came out was good, and that’s how my music career started .
Most people know you as a spoken-word artiste…
I don’t think I would call myself a spoken word artiste, really, though I used to perform at Open Mic or at the Milege Acoustic Project.
Quick Talk understands that five percent of the proceedings will support girls escaping child marriage. Share more…
I am a filmmaker and storyteller at heart. My very first documentary is called Little Faith, a story about Karamoja’s first female doctor.
I traveled to Karamoja for the very first time to meet her and I did not expect to fall in love with these teenage girls. The doctor told me that there was this school that protects “girls who were once like me”, because she too ran away from home due to the early marriage practice.
When I met them, I was overwhelmed with emotions and to me, [they represented] courage, ambition and dreams. I kept close contact with the school through my organization called the Kalaverse, which primarily tells the truth of the African girl through stories and film.
So, the documentary I did turned into an impact campaign in partnership with Dr Faith Nangiro and we later did the Runaway runway, where we found an opportunity to bring these girls on their first school trip to Kampala since they had never been outside Amudat.
The voices of these girls actually feature in the Ggulu album.
Well done!
The campaign is still continuing and, so far we, have been able to sponsor the education of 100 girls from Karamoja and we are still doing that, and we are also looking at sustainable ways to help the girls finance their education [someone give this girl her flowers!]
Any accolades for your music yet?
Yes! I won the best Afro fusion song and I have also been nominated for the Afrima awards four times. For film, I have won best documentary film for my Little Faith at the Uganda Film festival.
One of my songs, Let Her Know, got the attention of the African Union and it became the theme song of the African Union, Campaign to Educate Girls Post Covid-19, under the African Union Center For Girls and Women’s Education.
Since 2022, I have been their ambassador.
How was your own childhood?
One of my core memories is that November was for nsenene [grasshoppers] and they would fall like rain. We would collect all those grasshoppers and I remember just bonding with kids that I had never met, over grasshoppers, and I was like, wow, that’s the power of the nsenene [smiles with nostalgia. Back in the day, nsenene season was not so commercialised like today; every family basically caught its own grasshoppers].
Did you by any chance grow up in Masaka, the nsenene hub, then?
I grew up in Kampala in a family of 20 children; it is quite a beautiful family. I have quite a number of siblings and we all love one another and celebrate one another, and my parents made it a point that we go to good schools and get a good education.
Does music run in your family?
Both my parents are doctors and most of my family members are in those kind of professions. But in relation to the arts and music, I am the pioneer in my family and originally they didn’t see me taking that path, considering that I studied Dental Technology.
Which schools did you go to?
I went to Gayaza High School for six years, then I did a bachelor’s degree in Dental Technology at Makerere University. I got a scholarship to go study film and production under MultiChoice’s Talent Factory under Kenyatta University in Kenya.
Then I got another scholarship to do a short course in pitching under the University of Southern California in the USA.
Given the opportunity, what would you love to study further?
Knowledge is now everywhere. I can go to ChatGPT and figure out what I want, but I would love to study Psychology since I am a storyteller. I feel like psychology is at the core where these stories are coming from.
What else do you do for fun?
Well, it’s mostly coming together and creating stories with different creatives. But I love ffene [ jackfruit].
How do you balance your music career, advocacy work and family time?
For me, it’s about doing everything in the right time and season. But I am also grateful to have a partner who understands what I do.
He is a producer and poet, and I do film and music, and the fields are not very far apart. So, we are partners and we just find a way to figure everything out
ebenezernsubuga405@gmail.com