Missionaries for Capital: Brand Marketers and Music Sponsorship in Uganda

Abstract

This chapter is about branding as a rising trope in the present-day culture of capitalism in Africa. It draws upon interviews and observations from ethnomusicological fieldwork conducted in Uganda in 2006–2007 and again in 2010. My focus was on the Senator National Cultural Extravaganza, an annual, corporate-sponsored, national-scale event, whose title referred to Senator Extra Lager, a cheap brand of beer that participants in the competition were supposed to praise in their songs and dances. “Senator is good for your health, you drink it, your health improves!” sang one group in Lusoga language, adhering to the company’s instructions that they focus on Senator’s health benefits over “crude local gins,” as well as on the beer’s manufacture from ingredients grown on Ugandan farms. East African Breweries Ltd (EABL), a subsidiary of the giant multinational holding company Diageo, decided that the best way to promote its Senator brand in poor rural areas of Uganda was to have local performance troupes sing about it to their neighbors, in local languages and musical styles. (Ugandans speak more than 30 languages, and identify as many distinct cultures within their national boundaries.) The strategy of engaging rural musical groups as advertisers had the appeal of being doable on the cheap: EABL did not have to pay most of the performers anything, just offer big prizes to the top groups and let the performers’ competitive impulses take care of the rest.