Kwivuga celebrates Maya Angeluo

She was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. During a traumatic childhood, she was rendered mute for six years.
She later changed her name to Maya Angelou while working as a singer and dancer.
Maya Angelou, whose landmark book of 1969, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” — a lyrical, unsparing account of her childhood in the Jim Crow South — was among the first autobiographies by a 20th-century black woman to reach a wide general readership, died on Wednesday at her home.
For a woman that had been widely known for her roles as an author and poet, you couldn’t imagine her death would make a lot of fuzz in Kampala – Ugandans don’t read, what business they would have celebrating a poet.
But this was a wrong assumption – Kwivuga, Kampala’s premiere and by far the most popular monthly poet’s session had different plans all together. They decided to honor one of their own in a way they understand best, reciting poems.
Unlike the previous shows where Gato Mato in Bugolobi is covered in glamour with lights and Heineken banners, last week’s show was just different; the fireplace, paintings and those gloom candles carefully hidden in paper.
It seemed like an American style vigil meeting an African one.
The most beautiful thing about Kwivuga is the freedom they always give the performers, poetry sessions elsewhere run on specific themes. Much as this is a very good thing to do, a theme may in one way lock performers onto a topic which some of them are not necessarily passionate about.
Kwivuga lets them take the audience on journeys, be it sex, love, freedom or war in search of inspiration.
This time the show had its regular poets though the first timers outnumbered them, the likes of Medals the Born Again Politician or Nanda; the men basher didn’t perform.
Slim Emcee opened the catalogue with an exciting poem about women’s various demands that usually come with very few returns; he was definitely doing this for the second time here at Kwivuga but managed to drop in a couple of lines tat it didn’t sound predictable even for those that have seen him perform it before.
The Afro styled poet took his social activism on stage when he lashed at government officials about different bills they pass like the anti-pornography bill, he questioned what wrong his girl would have commited if she decided to show some skin.
Other performers were Melvin whose sexually oriented piece was done on the backdrop of John Legend’s All of me acoustic, Roshan’s letter to her new born baby, Effe from Jamaica and of course Jungle the Man eater, who actually came with a new poem this time round.
Many of the night performers made it a point to pay their respects to Maya Angeluo. The show was closed by Fille who excited many with her three hit songs.