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How a Brass Band has Stopped Children from ‘Simply Sinking into the Mud’

Trumpeter and DJ Florence Lugemwa has built a successful career in music and aims to motivate her band of school pupils from Uganda’s capital city to do the same. Since being spotted on stage by Portuguese producer Jonathan Saldanha in 2019 in a venue in the Bunga neighbourhood where she now lives, Florence has played trumpet with the critically acclaimed band HHY and the Kampala Unit, breaking out from her city’s underground electronic music scene to play at venues worldwide, including the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Triennale Milano, and Unsound festival in Poland. Many of the children are from the Katogo slums where parents struggle to find the money to pay for stationery, meals and uniforms. Lugemwa raises funds, including through a Gofundme page to pay for five members of the Homelands band to attend the school. “We are close to the landing point of Lake Victoria,” Senbulta says. “As a community of mostly fishermen, taking fish from the lake is considered more important than educating a child – we are here to show the difference an education can make.”

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN

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