The Western classical music scene in Kampala, Uganda: A music of the other

In this dissertation, I argue that Ugandan musicians have transformed Western classical music from a music of European missionaries and colonizers into a local practice. While East Africans of the independence era actively expunged European influences from many kinds of cultural expression, classical music in Kampala does not seem to have received the same treatment. By means of archival and ethnographic analysis, I show how distinct local histories of colonization, missionization and post-independence politics have shaped Ugandans' perception of the European Other. The short duration of British rule and a ban on Kenyan- and Zimbabwean-style European settlement alongside the acceptance of Christianity as an African practice are among the factors that contributed to my interlocutors' perception of classical music as a sound of Christianity rather than a sound of colonial domination.;I draw on fieldwork from 2006-2007 in Kampala to demonstrate how Ugandan classical musicians negotiate relationships in the context of a scene in order to ameliorate disconnectedness in some sectors of contemporary global economy. Kampalans participate with musicians in other African metropoles in transnational networks of classical music that exclude Europe and North America. By circumventing the West, Kampala becomes one of a plurality of centers for cultural production in global classical music.;I consider classical music as a practice in order to determine how its performance both expresses and shapes a postcolonial identity in Kampala. This also allows me to shift focus to the lived experience of the everyday, and determine exactly whose everyday includes the practice of classical music.