Uganda’s copy cat Musicians: A listenable history of music Sampling

Am a big music fan, not that it’s supposed to be a big deal but sometimes when I listen to a good song, I cant shake off the weird feeling that it was sampled from an old song or a classic. In Uganda, song sampling has been common since our growing music industry still struggles to get on its feet. Song sampling is of course illegal, especially with lack enforced copyright laws. Songs from big artists like Chameleon, Radio & Weasel and Eddy Kenzo at one point have always been a huge elaborate affair and that its no surprise to see them build off of an existing song or pick out the best parts of several others to create one coherent and cooler whole.

For geek week, I was tasked with hunting down some of these songs that we’ve come to love and expose where their inspiration was ‘robbed’ and in most cases with no copyrights to do so. The samples listed below are only from Ugandan musicians and some wanna be musicians. But if you search around online (if you lucky), you’ll find a bit of disagreement over what they grabbed from each song (sometimes lyrics, sometimes a whole tune) and whether or not there are actually other, uncredited excerpts involved — the collection below has been formed in part from those arguments. For the most part though, the samples come through loud and clear in in these musician’s tracks, propelling each song forward. Curious just how far and wide Uganda’s artists have copied other songs? Look below for history on this sampling.

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